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FORTY DAYS, 



Nineveh and Its Repentance, 



BY 



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Rev. SAMUEL H. HIGGINS, D.D. 




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BOSTON : 

JAMES H. EARLE, Publisher, 

178 Washington Street. 

1886. 



05 



3SU 



Copyright, 1886. 
By Samuel H. Higgins. 



Volumes of this Series. 



By Rev. Samuel H. Higgins, D. D. 



I. Forty Days ; or, Nineveh and its Repent- 
ance. Now ready. 

IN PREPARATION. 
II. Forty Days ; or, Noah and his Hearers. 

III. Forty Days; or, Elijah and his Fast. 

IV. Forty Days ; or, Christ and His Tempta- 

tion. 

*#* Uniform in style and binding, i6mo, 73 
cts. per volume^ post-paid. 

JAMES H. EARLE, Publisher, 
178 Washington St., Boston. 



CONTENTS. 

Chapter Page 

I. Nineveh 9 

II. Nineveh Awakened - 19 

III. Nineveh Repenting 47 

IV. Nineveh Praying - 79 
V. Nineveh Turning - - - 112 

VI. Nineveh Hoping - 143 

VII. Nineveh Saved - - - 172 



PREFACE. 



In our childhood we loved to read 
the wonderfully dramatic narrative of the 
preaching of Jonah, and the repentance of 
Nineveh. At a later period, when we were 
allowed of God to be put in trust of the holy 
ministry, our impression of that weighty 
passage in prophetic life grew and widened ; 
until at last, as we stood and gazed at this 
giant picture of one of the great preachers 
of antiquity, dealing with the mind and 
conscience of a vicious people, we could not 
fail to consider that the object lessons before 
us were meant to serve as a manual of the 
great doctrine both of a legal and an evangel- 
ical repentance as well. 



t PREFACE. 

If by these pages we may shed a single 
ray of light upon the matter of a sinner's 
return to God, or remove one obstruction 
out of his path, or give one upward impulse 
to a soul hitherto grovelling in the dust, 
we shall thank God for that instrumental 

service. 

S. H. H. 



CHAPTER I. 

NINEVEH. 

1VTINEVEH was the capital of the an- 
^ cient empire of Assyria. She is first 
mentioned in the Old Testament in connec- 
tion with the primitive dispersement and 
migrations of the human race. About the 
time that Nimrod, " the mighty hunter/' set- 
tled on the plains of Shinar, Asshur went 
forth and laid the foundations of the future 
Nineveh on the east bank of the river Tigris, 
some three hundred miles north from Babel, 
the after-seat of the great Babylon of the king- 
doms. Fifteen hundred years later, Nineveh 
was known as the wealthy and luxurious cap- 
ital of the Assyrian empire; and in many 



10 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

respects not unworthy of comparison with 
Babylon itself. 

According to the computation of Bonomi, 
Babylon contained two hundred and twenty- 
five square miles, Nineveh, two hundred and 
sixteen, while London, at the period of his 
comparison, claimed but one hundred and 
fourteen. Nineveh was indeed an "exceed- 
ing great city." The walls rose a hundred 
feet high, and broad enough for three chari- 
ots to drive abreast; while fifteen hundred 
towers, each two hundred feet in height, 
graced the walls that shut in a vast and 
mighty population. 

But with all this material greatness, Nine- 
veh was an idolater, and Assyrian idolatry 
was near of kin to the Babylonian. It was a 
gross polytheism, their gods being thousands 
in number, each village having its own par- 
ticular deity, and each divinity rejoicing in 
many names ; and, as is shown from thou- 
sands of theological tablets now in the British 
Museum, some of them having as many as 
fifty titles besides. 



NINEVEH. 1 1 

Nor did the resemblance to her sister city 
stop here. Like Babylon, to idolatry she 
added licentiousness, and to licentiousness, 
every form of wickedness common to the 
Gentile nations. She made vast strides in 
sin. She went whole leagues in transgres- 
sion. It is even stated that as Assyria was 
first in the rise of its power, she was the first 
to ripen in iniquity ; and this being so, by 
the inexorable law of moral gravitation, she 
was the first to go down under the just judg- 
ments of the great Ruler of the universe. 

Nahum, who did not use flattering speech, 
described her as " the bloody city : full of 
lies and robbery : a seed of evil doers : a cor- 
rupter of cities and of kingdoms." And to 
such a depth of moral infamy did she sink, 
that the prophet at last, as if in despair of 
her reformation, cried out : " There is no 
healing of thy bruise : thy wound is grievous : 
all that hear the bruit of thee shall clap their 
hands over thee : for upon whom hath not 
thy wickedness passed continually ? " And 
because of this, God declared by the mouth 



12 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

of his prophets, Nahum and Zephaniah, that 
he would "make Nineveh a desolation, and 
dry like a wilderness." 

Two agents especially are named for the 
purpose : " the fire shall devour thee," and 
"the sword shall cut thee off;" and in due 
time both came to pass. After a siege of 
several years by the united armies of the 
Medes under Cyaxeres, and the Babylonians 
under Nabopolassar, B. C. 606, the city was 
taken. "The sword cut off," but that was 
not all. She was carried away. She went 
into captivity. The conquerors "cast lots 
for her honorable men, and all her great men 
were bound in chains." The people were 
scattered upon the mountains, and no man 
gathered them. "The gates of the land 
were set wide open unto her enemies," and 
all "her strongholds were like fig trees with 
the first ripe figs, which, when shaken, fall 
into the mouth of the eater." And then 
another element came into play, for " the fire 
devoured" what the sword spared, as the 
slabs and statues now found in the excavated 



NINEVEH. 13 

ruins of this long - lost city most plainly 
declare. 

And now a long, dark night of silence and 
oblivion settled on the deserted city of the 
Assyrian kingdom. The very name of Nine- 
veh and Assyria alike faded out from the 
page of canonical history, and from all au- 
thentic history, sacred or profane. To the 
ancient world, she was as if she had not 
been. Herodotus, the father of history, 
passed that way B. C. 450, but only speaks 
of the Tigris as the river upon which the 
town of Nineveh formerly stood. Xenophen 
followed fifty years later, but with no better 
success. The very ruins were sunk below 
the surface of the earth. "I will," says 
Jehovah, "make thy grave, for thou art 
vile;" and so for long ages "she lay covered 
up in the earth, like a huge, misshapen heap 
or mound, which told nothing of what was be- 
low. Alexander himself must have marched 
over the site of the ancient city ; but not 
one of his historians, with the exception of 
Arrian, even alludes to the once famous capi- 



14 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

tal, whose palaces and walls were at that 
moment slumbering in the dust of centuries, 
and which kept their secret well and truly 
for thousands of years after. 

But this was to have an end. The time 
drew nigh when the long night of Nineveh's 
obscuration was to know a dawn. The day 
of revealing at last came. In the wonder- 
working providence of God, the venerable 
city of a half-forgotten empire was now to 
disclose its palaces, its temples, and its long- 
lost records to the light of antiquarian re- 
search, and certainly with results as new as 
they are surprising. 

The first traveller who carefully examined 
the supposed ruins of the city, was Mr. Rich, 
formerly political agent for the East India 
Company, at Bagdad ; but his investigations 
were almost entirely confined to Kouyunjik 
and the surrounding mounds, of which he 
made a survey in 1820. To him succeeded 
M. Botta, who was appointed French consul 
at Mosul, in 1 843 ; and the French govern- 
ment having now provided the necessary 



NINEVEH. 15 

funds, the work of exploration went bravely- 
forward. But the discoveries of M. Botta at 
Khorsabad were again followed by those of 
Mr. Layard at Nimroud and Kouyunjik, 
between the years 1845 an d 1850. 

But what we should regard as yet more won- 
derful, is the truly gratifying success which 
has attended the labors of Rawlinson, Hincks, 
Smith, and others, both French and German, 
in deciphering the cuneiform writings on the 
obelisks, marble slabs, and walls of the 
ancient palaces of Nineveh. Too much 
praise, we think, cannot be given to the inde- 
fatigable students of Assyrian lore, by reason 
of whose indomitable zeal and purpose the 
mysterious arrow-headed characters, so long 
shrouded in impenetrable mystery, have 
been made to disclose their meaning, and 
read out to the world the strangely preserved 
records of a people and a race that has long 
since perished from among men. 

Among the more important discoveries, 
might be mentioned the annals of Senna- 
cherib, together with his own account of his 



1 6 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

invasion of Palestine, and the amount of tribute 
which king Hezekiah was forced to pay him. 
The obelisk at Nimroud on which the famous 
writing was found, dates from the prophets 
Hosea, Joel, and Amos, and distinctly chroni- 
cles the names of Jehu, Jezebel, and Hazael. 
The Assyrian invasion and conquest was 
indeed one of those great events in Jewish 
history which stamped itself on the nation's 
memory, and so indelibly, that it can never be 
obliterated throughout the generations. Be- 
sides this, there is also an actual picture of 
the taking of Lachish by this greatest of 
Assyrian captains and monarchs. In short, 
the illustrations and confirmations, both of 
the prophetical and historical Scriptures, are 
clear and abundant, and afford a most strik- 
ing proof from an unexpected quarter of the 
verity of holy writ. 

The subjects of Assyrian painting and 
sculpture are, moreover, of the most sugges- 
tive character. The march, the onset, the 
pursuit, the siege, the passage of rivers, the 
submission and treatment of captives, secre- 



NINEVEH. 17 

taries noting the number of heads taken 
in battle, together with the amount of 
spoil, are all pictures of a great and warlike 
people. 

Mr. Layard was also so fortunate as to find 
at Kouyunjik, the archives of the empire, the 
true and substantial records of the kingdom, 
" the house of rolls," to which repeated refer- 
ence is had in the book of Ezra 4:15, and 
6:1. We might also mention the very 
important discovery of the tables of dynasties, 
to which Col. Rawlinson has devoted much 
time and attention. 

Nor is the end of these explorations of the 
remains of ancient Nineveh yet reached ; and 
for ourselves we would earnestly hope that 
they may continue to receive, for a considera- 
ble time to come, the large attention which 
their literary and theological importance 
demands. But for the present we can pro- 
ceed no further with this brief sketch. Those 
who may wish for fuller and larger details, 
we respectfully refer to the deeply interest- 
ing works of Layard, Rawlinson, Bonomi, 



1 8 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

George Smith, and others of like char- 
acter. 

In the pages that follow, we shall deal 
with the Nineveh of another day and gen- 
eration. 



CHAPTER II. 

NINEVEH AWAKENED. 

And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second 
time, saying, 

Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto 
it the preaching that I bid thee. 

So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to 
the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceeding 
great city of three days' journey. 

And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, 
and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall 
be overthrown. 

So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed 
a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them 
even to the least of them. 

Jonah, 3 : 1-5. 

"TV" T EARLY two thousand seven hundred 
^ and fifty years ago, a man dressed in 
dark raiment and girded with a leathern 
girdle, wearing the accompaniment of a flow- 
ing beard, and carrying a pilgrim's staff, 
might have been seen walking upon the east 
bank of the river Tigris, in the direction of 
the goodly city of Nineveh. The road, like 



20 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

all other highways leading to the metropolis 
of a great and mighty empire, was thronged 
with wayfarers ; but our traveller journeyed 
on alone, wrapt in his own solitary thoughts 
and musings — though what those musings 
were, no person knew save himself. He 
seemed possessed of a secret of fearful power, 
for at times a strange and even wild expres- 
sion flitted athwart his visage, and then the 
dark eye would burn and glow like a furnace ; 
presently, all trace of emotion would vanish, 
leaving that Hebrew face as cold, and dark, 
and impenetrable as before. 

At last the stranger stood before Nineveh, 
the magnificent capital of Assyria; and no 
man could stand where he now stood, espe- 
cially for the first time, and, most of all, 
upon his errand, without pausing before going 
farther. It was evidently the first time with 
him ; and as his eye took in a portion of the 
great city of the East, as he glanced upward 
to its colossal gates, its lofty walls, its thou- 
sand towers, each running up hundreds of 
feet, as he saw tower and gate and wall alive 



NINEVEH AWAKENED. 21 

with the hosts of Assyria, and bristling with 
the weapons of war, a sense of the greatness 
of his mission came over him, and we may 
well suppose that he silently, but fervently, 
implored the protection of the God of Israel. 

Reassured, he now passed under the lofty 
portals of one of the gates, guarded by the 
colossal statues of Assyrian art, and his feet 
stood fairly within the city. It was an early 
hour of the morning, and the marts of busi- 
ness were fast filling up for the day. In 
every direction he saw the full tide of life 
pouring out into the wide, and seemingly, 
interminable streets ; and from every quarter 
the hum of a mighty population was borne 
upon his ear. The gay booths of the As- 
syrian merchants were glittering in the morn- 
ing sun; and those caterers of metropolitan 
taste and pleasure were already disposing 
their rich tissues, their Tyrian dyes, their 
goodly Babylonish garments, their broidered 
work and fine linen, their coral, their agate, 
their emeralds, their chests of cedar, filled 
with rich apparel, and bound with cords; 



22 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. . 

everything, in short, to tempt the extrav- 
agance of a gay and sensuous people. 

In fact, wherever his eye wandered, it fell 
on masses of men, dressed in every variety of 
showy and picturesque costume ; and while 
they thronged the avenues of trade and com- 
merce, the horse, the camel, and the elephant 
might be seen passing through the crowded 
thoroughfares, laden with the produce of the 
city or the empire. Occasionally, there rang 
out the blast of martial music, and stern- 
looking men, with red shields, and wearing 
scarlet or purple clothing, rolled by in gor- 
geous chariots, with amazing rapidity, to the 
morning rendezvous. 

Jonah — for it was he — looked upon all 
this busy scene, this moving panorama, this 
long and splendid vista of buildings, towers, 
palaces and walls, with a bewildered gaze. 
To him it was a moment of awful and sub- 
lime suspense. He was in Nineveh, and he 
could not conceal from himself that ; he was 
there upon a delicate and dangerous mission, 
He was in Nineveh; and he had come up 



NINEVEH AWAKENED. 23 

from the depths of the sea to cry against her. 
He was in Nineveh ; and though a stranger 
to the thousands who now swept past him, 
before night-fall his name and message would 
be known in palace and in hovel, for miles 
and miles together. He was in Nineveh; 
and he saw around him the evidences of a 
people wholly given up to its idolatries. Yet 
he had only to utter a word, a cry, and though 
that cry should roll along in whispers, or steal 
upon the public ear through a thousand sub- 
terranean channels, it would mow down that 
mass of moving life as the reaper's sickle 
mows down the golden and bearded grain in 
harvest time. And now he resolved to speak 
that word. 

Taking up his burden, and throwing him- 
self into the midst of the population at the very 
entering of the gates, he began to cry, after 
the manner of a herald : " Yet forty days, and 
Nineveh shall be overthrown." 

Now it will be seen, at the outset of my 
observations # upon the preaching of Jonah, 
that, beyond the point made, the prophet 



24 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

states no case, makes no argument, gives no 
reasons, submits no proposition, but drops his 
burden upon the guilty city, like a bolt from 
an overcharged sky, and then, moving on, 
leaves the coming flood to sweep them as 
with a besom. 

In respect of length, it is indeed one of 
the shortest, being spoken in a breath, the 
fewest words possible, only a line, and that a 
line of prophecy, not of history ; of threaten- 
ing, not of promise ; of law, not of gospel ; 
and yet, in respect of results, it is one of the 
mightiest that ever smote upon the ears of 
living men. It is a sermon, in fact, without 
exordium, without division, without perora- 
tion, without appeal ; but if the message is 
strong its sententiousness is terrific. As if 
Jonah would say, " People of Nineveh, I come 
to acquaint you with your doom. In forty 
days you will be overthrown. People of Nin- 
eveh, I have done." And if this is not what 
we moderns would call pleasant preaching, or 
logical preaching, or rhetorical preaching, or 
learned preaching, or exhaustive preaching, 



NINEVEH AWAKENED. 2$ 

it is nevertheless true and faithful, and this 
is the point now set for us to consider. 

At all events, it was the preaching that 
God bade, and therefore the preaching for 
Jonah to give ; and it must ever be told as 
one of the remarkable merits of this remark- 
able man, that on this great occasion he did 
not go beyond the word of the Lord, to speak 
either more or less than the thing com- 
manded. He altered nothing, concealed noth- 
ing, evaded nothing, softened nothing. He 
certainly did not blunt his weapon. He did 
not overlay his doctrine with the pomp of a 
gaudy rhetoric. He did not corrupt the 
word of God through vain traditions. The 
manna did not spoil in his keeping. He has 
strong words -for a guilty people, and he 
speaks them ; live coals of juniper, and he 
lets them fall. Duty is his : results are God's. 
" Preach unto them the preaching that I 
bid thee : " and he does it, bravely, nobly, 
with heart and mind and soul. And for 
his unshrinking, unswerving fidelity to his 
instructions, God owned and blessed him, as 



26 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

we shall presently see, in a manner hitherto 
unexampled. 

And I cannot but think that in his consent- 
ing to be simply the mouth-piece of heaven, 
in his consenting to turn aside and let God 
speak by him and through him, in his con- 
senting to be nothing but the voice of One 
crying behind him, I see the sublime purpose 
of emptying before the filling. In short, by 
this very measure, Jonah is so completely 
stripped of all occasion of self-glorying, that 
God is left free to do a work, at the hearing 
of which every knee is made to bow, and 
every tongue is brought to confess that the 
thing is of God and not of man. 

For hardly had he spoken before the fire 
of heaven fell. Hardly had he spoken before 
all Nineveh was on her knees. Hardly had 
he spoken before the proud city was brought 
down, and the lofty city was laid low, and the 
rebellious city was sitting in the dust of a 
profound humiliation. The word of the Lord 
out-ran him! The fire in the stubble con- 
sumed all before him ! It was fire in the 



NINEVEH AWAKENED. 2J 

bramble, fire in the wood, fire in the forest, 
the great fire of God burning conviction into 
the hearts of the people by the very breath 
which the mouth of the Lord of Hosts had 
kindled. 

Marvellous ! marvellous ! but nevertheless 
true, that in all that vast population, among 
the thousands of Nineveh, the reprobate city 
of a reprobate empire, it would seem, so far 
as the history goes, that nobody challenged, 
nobody scorned, nobody mocked, nobody 
doubted, nobody neglected, but all, with one 
accord, gave instant heed to the word that 
was spoken ; and like so many alarm-bells, 
passed the piercing cry from street to street, 
from temple to temple, from park to park, 
from garden to garden, until the whole city 
rang with the fearful news, that Nineveh was 
on the verge of doom ! 

The effect was indescribable. If thunder 
peals had burst over Nineveh, if forked 
lightnings had burned and shattered down 
her temples, if a whirlwind had come rushing 
in from the desert, tearing up her streets and 



28 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

overturning towers, walls, and palaces in its 
way, the sensation could not have been 
greater. 

And, strangest of all, nobody asked what 
Nineveh had done ; just as if Nineveh knew 
what Nineveh was. Instead of the preaching 
of one Jonah that day, there were a thousand, 
yea, tens of thousands and thousands upon 
thousands. On that memorable occasion, 
when the word of God was unbound, con- 
science, that vicegerant of God in the human 
soul, was unbound also ; and when conscience 
was brought out from under the yoke and set 
free, all Nineveh became engaged in crying 
out against Nineveh. And, compared to the 
violence of these self-accusers, Jonah's words 
are few and feeble. Their whisper is louder 
than the prophet's thunder. 

But in all this, never was man more disap- 
pointed than Jonah. With his knowledge of 
Ninevite character, he was prepared for the 
scowl of the murderer, the leer of the drunk- 
ard, the jest of the mocker, the power of the 
noble, and the wrath of the king; for any- 



NINEVEH AWAKENED. 2g 

thing but rivers from the rock or water-floods 
from the desert. He was ready for defeat, 
not for victory. But God did not mean it so, 
for not in Samaria itself did the prophet ever 
bear such sway as he did that day in proud 
and wicked Nineveh. Lifting up his voice 
like a trumpet, he cried aloud, "Yet forty 
days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown." 

And it will forever stand as one of the 
marvels of grace, that Nineveh herself was 
the first to proclaim, "Just and true are thy 
ways, thou king of saints." So far from 
rushing upon the messenger of God, he 
moved among them all as a superior being, 
and the awe-struck multitude made way for 
him as he passed. No bird of night ever 
sounded forth a more dismal note ; and yet, 
strange to say, no message from God or man 
was ever received with more general or un- 
questioning conviction of its truth. People 
stopped to gaze at the man in the dark 
mantle; and as they listened to that sharp, 
wild, bittern-like cry, stout-hearted men threw 
down shield and spear and helmet, and 



30 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

crouched before him, as if he had been a 
descending god. 

But if they stopped he did not. On he 
went, slowly, gravely, and with the air of a 
man to whom was confided a high and impor- 
tant trust, but whose courage was every way 
equal to the occasion. On he went, up and 
down their streets, out into their highways 
and byways, back into their temples and 
market-places, for sixteen or twenty miles to- 
gether ; and wherever he went, stamping with 
the foot, or smiting with the hand, or simply 
declaring with uplifted voice, that Nineveh 
was about to be brought down to hell ! 

Doubtless, in the course of that memorable 
day, explanations would be demanded as to 
the method of the judgment. Overthrown, 
indeed ; but how ? Will the earth open and 
swallow the city ? Or will the Lord rain down 
fire and brimstone, as upon Sodom and Go- 
morrah ? But of explanations he had none to 
give, as of encouragement he had none to 
offer. Whether the blow was to come out of 
earth or heaven he did not stop to discuss. 



NINEVEH AWAKENED. 3 I 

The how, indeed, was no affair of his. 
" Preach unto it the preaching that I bid 
thee;" and so on he rushed, with bold and 
rapid strides, as if in haste to complete his 
circuit, and finish the work given him to do. 

When the sun went down upon that mem- 
orable day, Jonah's work was done, and well 
done. No man could have done it better. 
Whatever may have been his shortcomings 
before or after, this particular commission was 
well and faithfully executed. Raised com- 
pletely above the fear of man, he had been as 
bold as a lion in threatening the vengeance of 
heaven against their multiplied crimes and 
abominations; and in this respect I do not 
think that Jonah falls a whit below the meas- 
ure of Elijah upon Carmel. But from the 
sermon I now pass to its reception, for it is 
said that "the people of Nineveh believed 
God." 

The alarm which began with the first de- 
livery of the message, and which, like a thou- 
sand swollen streams, had gone on increasing 
during the day, reached its height by night- 



32 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

fall, so that when the evening lights'" were 
kindled in Nineveh, nothing was talked of in 
the gay saloons of fashion but the man in the 
dark mantle and that one boding, awful cry. 
And yet, as already remarked, fast and far as 
the tidings went, conviction of the truth went 
with it and beyond it, for "the people of 
Nineveh believed God and proclaimed a fast." 

And in this case, not the common people 
only, but the rulers also believed God, for 
word came unto the king of Nineveh ; and 
when the tidings crossed the royal threshold, 
it smote right and left. All around him 
hearts were quaking with fear. All around 
him, one wild cry of anguish, horror, despair, 
was coming up from the conscience-stricken 
multitude ; and now every throb of his Own 
heart beat responsive to the worst fears of a 
foreboding and excited people. 

Possibly that night Nineveh retired to rest 
as at other times, but if she slept, she slept 
as on a volcano. In their very dreams, they 
saw the figure of the advancing and retreat- 
ing prophet ; and far as the eye could scan 



NINEVEH AWAKENED. 33 

him, Le was moving in the land of shadows 
with the tread of an Avenger, eye flashing, 
arm waving, voice roaring : " Yet forty days 
and Nineveh shall be overthrown." And 
from such short and disturbed slumbers they 
would awake, glad to find that forty days 
stood between them and threatened over- 
throw. 

But in the palace, no man slept. There, 
every man stood sentinel. Unlike the Pha- 
raohs of Scripture, this king not only felt as 
a man, but as the father of a great and 
mighty people. And so we may suppose the 
night wore away in deep and anxious deliber- 
ation with his nobles ; and when morning 
dawned, their measures were taken, and 
those measures proved the safety of the 
empire. 

But what I now seek to show is, that the 
foundation of all that was done on this great 
occasion, was laid in a simple, but implicit 
faith in God. " The people of Nineveh be- 
lieved God" And it was a faith that bore 
fruit : a faith that proved itself by works : a 



34 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

faith that rested not till something was done, 
in some good degree adequate to the danger. 
"They proclaimed a fast," and engaged in 
other things which may be noticed hereafter. 
But, "they believed God," — that was the 
main thing ; and for the present I hold to 
that. And I hold there, because I plainly 
perceive that it is this very thing of belief or 
unbelief in the hearer, that runs the line at 
last between a saved man and a lost man. 
If God's testimony is credited, we shall leave 
the burning house ; but if not, we shall stay 
and perish in the flames. In Sodom, upon 
the last night of its life, and with two celes- 
tial beings upon the spot to fire the magazine 
that is to bring it down, there is not a move- 
ment. But here in Nineveh, at the distance 
of forty days, there is a mighty upheaval, 
for "the people of Nineveh believed God." 
Nineveh did not regard God's threatenings as 
an idle tale, which Sodom did ; and when the 
Assyrian capital grasped the whole terrific 
conception of what was in store for them, 
all Assyria could not keep down the crying. 



NINEVEH AWAKENED. 35 

Yea, doubtless they had heard of the rain 
of fire and brimstone on their sister Sodom ; 
and if so, they not only saw the impending 
catastrophe, but one of the possible modes of 
its accomplishment. With this great historic 
example before them, it was easy to see how 
in forty days, or in forty hours, Nineveh 
might be forever blotted out from the map of 
nations. In the light of the lurid flames of 
the God-forsaken cities of the plain, they 
saw their own haughty capital going down in 
another gulf of Siddim. They saw it all : the 
earth heaving, the lightnings flashing, the 
mountains trembling, the sands melting, the 
sea blazing. By faith they saw their forests 
on fire, their rocks on fire, their hills on fire, 
their valleys on fire, their whole land a 
cavern of fire, and a world of fire behind, 
driving on to a world of fire before. By faith 
they saw another molten tide, like to that of 
Gomorrah, rising and swelling, surging and 
roaring, before them and around them, and 
every face gathering blackness. By faith 
they saw heaven and earth, time and eternity, 



2,6 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

the living and the dead, rushing together; 
and alas, they were not ready for the rushing. 
In the light of these burning cities of the 
plain, they felt the suffocating fumes coming 
down, their sinews beginning to parch, their 
lungs to burn, and their substance to dry up ; 
and with the three thousand of a later day, 
who also "believed God," they began to ask 
of king and noble, " What shall we do ? " 
"So the people of Nineveh believed God, 
and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, 
from the greatest of them even to the least 
of them." 

And so the question returns upon us, On 
what does the power of the Christian pulpit 
mainly depend ? And to excite your inter- 
est in this question to the utmost, let me 
add that in this divinely appointed ordi- 
nance is bound up at once the highest 
glory of God, and the greatest good of man. 
Confessedly, it is the bulwark of all sound 
doctrine and good morals ; confessedly, it is 
set for the defence of the truth as it is in 
Jesus ; confessedly, it is pledged for the con- 



NINEVEH AWAKENED. 37 

version of the world to God ; and this being 
so, it will never cease to be a matter of fer- 
vent and anxious inquiry to the latest end of 
time, On what does the power of the Chris- 
tian pulpit mainly depend ? 

And I answer, first, The pulpit to be a 
power in the earth, must do the preaching that 
God bids it. 

Plainly and undeniably this. In the way 
of topics it invents nothing, originates noth- 
ing. Its message is given it of God ; and 
fidelity to that message is the first and high- 
est requisition of a gospel minister. It con- 
cerns the minister that he be found faithful. 
Deliver your message, "Preach the preach- 
ing that I bid thee," is the solemn charge of 
the Holy Ghost himself. First and last, 
the pulpit is declarative, and declarative of 
the mind and will of God. " I have not 
shunned," says the intrepid apostle, "to 
declare unto you the whole counsel of God." 
And with this, so far as the subject-matter of 
its communication is concerned, it begins and 
ends. With every possible variety in the 



38 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

mode of presenting the great truth with 
which it deals, it cannot step aside from its 
one work of speaking on God's behalf. 

I mean by this that the pulpit has an orbit 
of its own, a legitimate function or province, 
an appointed sphere, and that anywhere 
within that sphere, it has power given it from 
on high ; but I mean also, that it must 
revolve in that orbit, or share the fate of 
other eccentric bodies, and be dashed to 
atoms. Undoubtedly it has a commission to 
preach the gospel to every creature ; and by 
the gospel, I mean the great salvation which 
Jesus Christ wrought out, who is the same 
yesterday, to-day, and forever. Undoubtedly 
it has a commission to declare all the counsel 
of God ; and by the counsel of God I mean 
the whole system of divine truth revealed in 
our Bible. Undoubtedly it has a commission, 
as Paul said to Timothy, to " preach the 
word ; " and by the word I understand the 
doctrines we are to believe, the duties we 
are to perform, and the experiences we are to 
enjoy. 



NINEVEH AWAKENED. 39 

And further, this word is to be preached ; 
that is, heralded, proclaimed, set forth with 
the living voice of the living minister. And 
without entering into reasons for this pecu- 
liarity, it is enough to say that it is of God's 
own plan and devising; for "it has pleased 
God by the foolishness of preaching, to save 
them that believe." "And I saw an angel," 
said the apostle John, "flying through the 
midst of heaven, having the everlasting 
gospel to preach unto them that dwell upon 
the earth ; " but the living ambassador is that 
angel or messenger. 

Everywhere, then, and at all times, the 
ministry of the Word is to champion the 
truth as it is in Jesus. And this is its one 
grand purpose and design on earth ; and 
"though an angel from heaven preach any 
other gospel, let him be accursed." Accepting 
the word of God, the whole testimony of 
Jesus, as the one living and infallible stand- 
ard of doctrine and duty, it is bound by the 
highest authority to declare the truth, the 
whole truth, and nothing but the truth ; and 



40 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

it is only by doing this that it can either 
hope to save itself, or those to whom it min- 
isters. 

Need I add, that such a pulpit must not be 
in bondage to any man. It must be free and 
light as air. It must be unfettered, un- 
shackled, unhampered, as a mountain bird of 
fleetest wing and strongest pinion. It has 
no master but God. It wears no yoke but 
the yoke of the King of kings. " Thou shalt 
receive the law at My mouth, and warn them 
from Me." "Arise, go unto Nineveh, and 
preach unto it the preaching that / bid thee." 
The pulpit, the legitimate pulpit, is not so 
much the minister's throne as God's ; and if 
faithful to its high mission, it will be a power 
in the earth as long as the sun or moon 
endures. And when I regard the weakness 
of the instrument, I say with the apostle, 
" That we have this treasure in earthen ves- 
sels, that the excellency of the power may be 
of God, and not of men." 

I observe, second, That for the pulpit to 
be in full vigor and efficiency, or, as we 



NINEVEH AWAKENED. 41 

might express it, at its maximum power, it is 
not only essential that the preacher should 
preach a pure and unadulterated gospel, but 
that the people shall believe in the preaching. 

For if it is true that the gospel saves them 
that believe, it is just as true that it saves 
none other. And if the preacher is com- 
pelled at any time to ask, "Who hath 
believed our report ? " he will also be com- 
pelled to take up the refrain, "To whom hath 
the arm of the Lord been revealed ? " For 
where there is no belief of the report of the 
gospel messenger, assuredly God makes no 
revelation of his arm. And in explanation of 
the plague of spiritual barrenness under the 
preaching of God's faithful servants, it is 
said of certain who sat under a prophetic 
ministry, "That the word preached did not 
profit them, not being mixed with faith in 
them that heard it ;" clearly showing that no 
amount of pulpit fervor, or of good fidelity in 
the very chief est of God's servants, will atone 
for the lack of faith in the hearer. 

So then, " the people of Nineveh believed 






42 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

God." And why not ? Why should not men 
believe every word of God ; for every word of 
God is pure ? Hath God spoken, and will he 
not do it ? Hath he threatened, and will he 
not perform it ? Is God a man that he should 
lie, or the son of man that he should repent ? 
Why should any man make God a liar by a 
wicked and daring unbelief of anything that 
the mouth of the Lord has spoken ? Nay, 
verily, it is easier for heaven and earth to 
pass, than for one tittle of the law to fail. 
Wherefore, let us "have faith in God." 

And why not have faith in God ? Have 
we not a revelation ? Have we not miracles ? 
Have we not prophecy ? Have we not evi- 
dences, presumptive and direct, external, inter- 
nal and collateral; everything, in short, to 
encourage his people to hope in the goodness 
and to trust in the mercy that endureth 
forever ? 

In conclusion, we see here, as elsewhere, 
that the pulpit is not complete in itself, nor 
yet the hearer in himself ; but that they must 
advance together in solid column to reap the 



NINEVEH AWAKENED. 43 

hundred-fold harvest of Jonah in his preach- 
ing to Nineveh ; or that other great harvest 
that was long after reaped, under the preach- 
ing of Peter upon the day of Pentecost. 

And who that looks out to-day upon a 
thousand fields already white for the harvest, 
both at home and abroad, does not long with 
vehement longing, to see such a union of 
these two great working forces of Christianity 
as shall compel the immediate surrender of a 
revolted world to Christ ? With the faithful 
preacher going before, and the faithful hearer 
following after ; with sanctuary power in the 
pulpit and sanctuary power in the pew ; with 
the beauty of holiness flashing from the 
breast-plate of the one, and a like beauty 
radiating from the every-day life of the other, 
the shout would soon go up from a rejoicing 
earth, "The kingdoms of this world are 
become the kingdoms of our -Lord and of his 
Christ ; and he shall reign for ever and ever." 

"Awake, awake; put on strength, O arm 
of the Lord ; awake, as in the ancient days, 
in the generations of old. Art thou not it 



44 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

that hath cut Rahab and wounded the dragon ? 
Art thou not it which hath dried the sea, the 
waters of the great deep ; that hath made the 
depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to 
pass over ? " Assuredly, if every pulpit were 
as the mouthpiece of God, and every hearer 
gave the more earnest heed and let nothing 
slip, there is no power of the enemy that could 
stand before them. Marching under such a 
banner, even the deadliest conflict with sin 
and error would be a march to victory, and 
never to defeat. Heathen temples would be 
demolished, and their deserted idols and altars 
given to the moles and to the bats ; Christian 
sanctuaries would arise beautiful upon every 
green vale, and be seen with the earliest light 
of morning, gilding the tops of the highest 
mountains ; the clash of arms and the fury of 
battle would no longer resound through the 
habitable earth* and the voice of a brother's 
blood would forever cease to cry ; the jubilee 
of the nations would come, and the whole 
earth would be filled with his glory. 

And in prospect of that cloudless day, be it 



NINEVEH AWAKENED. 45 

near or be it distant, we would say, Let 
heaven rejoice and let earth be glad. Get 
ready your hosannas ; for come when it may, 
the pulpit of that golden age will more than 
win back its ancient renown for health and 
vigor, life and power. Under the white heat 
of a new baptism of fire, it will inaugurate 
a career of struggles and of triumphs, of 
battles and of victories, that will take a wait- 
ing church, with all banners flying, directly 
up to millennial times and millennial glory. 
Then shall "the wilderness and the solitary 
place be glad for them, and the desert shall 
rejoice and blossom as the rose. It shall 
blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with 
joy and singing: the glory of Lebanon shall 
be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel 
and Sharon ; they shall see the glory of the 
Lord, and the excellency of our God." 

Wonderful, wonderful transformations in 
moral character and condition are in store for 
our race ; but under the transfiguring power 
of the Holy Ghost it will come, for the mouth 
of the Lord hath spoken it. " In those days 



4-6 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

the Spirit shall be poured out from on high :" 
and under the abundant rain of righteousness 
that will then set in, every congregation will 
become a vale of weeping, and every convo- 
cation of believers a holy convocation, even 
as the upper room in which the disciples were 
assembled upon the birthday of our common 
Christianity. " Not by might, nor by power, 
but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." 
And, moreover, "Thus saith the Lord God, I 
will yet for this be inquired of by the house 
of Israel, to do it for them." God alone is 
great : man is nothing ; and to the ever-blessed 
name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost be all 
honor and glory, world without end. 



CHAPTER III. 

NINEVEH REPENTING. 

For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose 
from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered 
him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 

And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through 
Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, 
Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing : 
let them not feed, nor drink water : 

But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. 

Jonah 3:6,7, 8. 

In those days came John the Baptist, preaching, in the 
wilderness of Judea, and saying, Repent ye ; for the king- 
dom of heaven is at hand. . . . And now also the axe 
is laid unto the root of the trees : therefore every tree which 
bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into 
the fire. 

Matthew 3 : 1, 2, 10. 

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit : a broken and 
a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. 

Psalm 51 : 17. 
The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart ; 
and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. 

Psalm 34: 18. 

f I ^HE second class of preachers in Nine- 

veh was of a very different order from 

the first. The first thundered forth judg- 



48 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

ment without mercy; but the second were 
preachers of hope rather than preachers of 
fear. Jonah came saying, "Yet forty days 
and Nineveh shall be overthrown;" but the 
day after, a thousand heralds, for aught I 
know, were seen following in his track, push- 
ing out in every conceivable direction, and 
publishing throughout Nineveh not only one 
of the most extraordinary decrees that ever 
issued from royal lips, but also one of the 
most evangelical proclamations that ever 
received a royal signet. 

And here you observe, that though the 
foreign missionary put in the plough, the 
native helpers reaped the harvest. The work 
of the foreign missionary was one, but the 
work of the domestic missionary was another. 
Jonah came clearing the way, laying the axe 
close to the tree, plucking up all Nineveh by 
the roots, blasting rocks, and carrying every- 
thing by storm ; but when the giant obstruc- 
tions were removed, and the cleared forest 
was left open for spiritual culture, and nothing 
was visible but Nineveh's prostration, and 



NINEVEH REPENTING. 49 

nothing audible but Nineveh's outcries, then 
another instrumentality was quickly born into 
life, and hastened on to finish the work so 
nobly and courageously begun. And God 
employs these two classes of workers in his 
moral vineyard, now and forevermore. 

Nor is this a feature of Church life only. 
The outside world has its pioneers also, its 
hardy sons of toil, its noble army of athletes, 
the men of the axe and the shovel, the men 
who hew down forests and span rivers, who 
level mountains and raise valleys, who are 
always found nobly and valiantly fighting the 
battles of an ever advancing civilization ; but 
the men who march after are doing another 
work, to the full as honorable as they. And 
God forbid that I should lightly esteem either 
the one or the other. 

And so, too, in this other field of which I 
am speaking, the great Lord of the harvest, 
who here superintends all the operations of 
spiritual husbandry, directs one to the plough- 
ing, another to the sowing, a third to the 
reaping, a fourth to the gleaning, and a fifth 



50 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

to the gathering into barns ; far as I survey 
this field, a busy multitude appears. 

But what matters it, so that God's work is 
done, whether my hand is on the plough or 
the seed bag, whether I am thrusting in 
the sickle or gleaning in a field twice reaped, 
whether I am binding up sheaves and bundles, 
or carrying them to the garner ? I say what 
matters it, so I am doing God's work, and 
doing it heartily, as unto God and not unto 
men ? For who is Paul, or who is Cephas, 
or who is Apollos, so Christ worketh in all 
and through all, and over all, God blessed 
forever ? One man undoubtedly can do better 
work on the foundation, another on the super- 
structure. One man is most at home in, the 
department of instruction, another in the 
department of excitement. One man is wise 
to plan, another is strong to execute. A 
Moses brings the Church out of Egypt ; but 
a Joshua leads the conquering hosts into 
Canaan. But I say again, what matters it, 
so Christ is served, and each is busy in 
accomplishing as a hireling his day? Only 



NINEVEH REPENTING. 5 I 

let us be "laborers together with God," and 
all is honorable, all is safe, and all is well. 

Now, in going on with the history of this 
Great Awakening at Nineveh, it is a notice- 
able fact that the first man to signalize his 
concern is the king himself. " For word 
came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose 
from his throne and he laid his robe from 
him, and covered himself with sackcloth, and 
sat in ashes." Ordinarily, the advance is 
from the least to the greatest ; but here the 
method is the other way. The progress is 
from above, downward. The first man in 
Assyria is the first man to cover himself with 
sackcloth and sit in ashes. The royal sinner 
becomes the royal penitent. 

The first tree that comes down under the 
judicial axe of Jonah, is this strong oak in 
Bashan, this tall cedar in Lebanon ; and the 
court influence now being thrown into the 
right scale, the next thing we discover is the 
pleasing sight of " the nobles," with the king 
in front, heading a great work of moral 
reform. 



52 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

The effect was immediate and universal. 
Never was a little good example so deeply 
and powerfully contagious. The act of one 
became the act of all. The repentance of an 
individual became merged in the repentance 
of an empire. A new Sabbath arose on 
Nineveh. All work was suspended. All 
business stopped. All pleasure was given 
up. Nothing now was suffered to engross 
the public mind but deliverance from a 
great and impending overthrow. Nineveh, 
which had sat as queen of nations, and said, 
" I shall see no sorrow," came down from her 
nest of pride and began to mingle ashes 
with her weeping. Nineveh, which had been 
exalted to heaven, now saw her sins, and 
confessed and bewailed them. The con- 
science-stricken people began to bare their 
neck to the sword of divine justice. And in 
this, as we shall presently perceive, Nineveh 
was preparing for a Pentecost, for water-floods 
in the desert, for a revival of such sweeping 
dimensions that we shall probably yet dis- 
cover it in the records of the Assyrian 



NINEVEH REPENTING. 53 

empire ; there placed as a great light to other 
kingdoms, and for full a hundred and twenty 
years a faithful beacon to its own. 

Before going a step farther in the history, 
we must notice that the first great work of 
the spirit of God upon the heart of man, is 
to make him feel his own nothingness; that 
the first school into which Christ puts us is 
the school of abasement ; that the first lesson 
we are set to learn in that school is the 
mortification of the spirit ; and that until this 
is learned, and well learned, nothing is learned. 
I do not wonder, therefore, that the first 
beatitude pronounced in the Sermon upon 
the Mount, is a blessing upon this poverty 
of spirit : "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for 
theirs is the kingdom of heaven." The 
divine reason for this is obvious enough. 
That process is, first the emptying, and then 
the filling ; and God empties, that he may 
fill. First the humbling, and then the exalt- 
ing ; and God humbles, that he may exalt. 
First the casting down and the taking away 
of pride, for it is not pride or high-mindedness 



54 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

that brings us to God, but humility ; and so 
God casts down that he may lift up. First 
the want, and then the fulness ; for it is not 
our fulness that brings us to God, but our 
want. And so in the kingdom of grace, it is 
inevitable that the years of leanness should 
precede the years of fulness and plenty. I 
see not how else any man can ever hope to 
be saved. " Except ye be converted and 
become as little children, ye shall in no wise 
enter the kingdom of heaven.'.' 

Now if the question is raised : What does 
the king of Nineveh mean by covering him- 
self with sackcloth, and sitting in ashes? I 
am constrained to answer, that a day has 
dawned in which the king feels that instead 
of being a great sovereign he is a great 
sinner ; that instead of being something he is 
nothing ; and that, as a consequence, instead 
of being filled with self-admiration, he is 
now filled with strong disgust and deep self- 
loathing. This is what it means. I think 
that any man of spiritual discernment will see 
that it means true self-abasement and genuine 



NINEVEH REPENTING. 55 

poverty of spirit. Down there in the dust, 
with his kingly gear laid aside, and his royal 
baubles repudiated, the king is saying that 
he has nothing whatever to present to God 
but a broken heart and a contrite spirit, that 
all his life has been vanity and sin, that even 
now his best endeavors are denied, that of 
himself he has not so much as one good 
thought, or one acceptable prayer, that he 
deserves hell, but if saved from hell God shall 
have all the glory. 

And if any of us are strangers to such 
spiritual poverty, then we are also strangers 
to the blessing, for the spirit and the blessing 
go together. I earnestly exhort, therefore, 
every man who is looking to a religious life, 
to begin by casting himself in the dust before 
God ; for " whoso humbleth himself shall be 
exalted, but whoso exalteth himself shall be 
abased." No other beginning can have a 
good ending. 

Now, in still proceeding with the repent- 
ance of this extraordinary man, I must notice 
another fact, which may serve to show in a 



56 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

yet more striking way that he was taught of 
God. I allude to the pains taken to put 
himself right before the whole Assyrian 
empire in the matter of his present relation 
to the one true and living God. For imme- 
diately after framing his own doings to turn 
to the Lord, he made a decree which 
embodied his royal wishes upon the subject, 
and then he caused that decree to be pub- 
lished and proclaimed through Nineveh ; and 
from Nineveh the new light rayed out to 
the remoter parts of the earth. In this, he 
showed himself every inch a man. He asks 
no subject to do what he had not already 
done himself, both as a man and as a king. 
He does not say, Go, but Come. Personal 
repentance, personal confession, personal hu- 
miliation, go before his lifting the mantle of 
a great reformer. 

And doubtless this is as it should be. 
David himself felt the high propriety of this, 
when he prayed through twelve verses of the 
fifty-first Psalm, that God would make it all 
right with himself before he gave a thought 



NINEVEH REPENTING. 57 

to others : " Then will I teach transgressors 
thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto 
thee." Nor do I discover how an honest 
man can do anything else. We look to the 
physician to heal himself; to the sage, to 
practice his own lessons ; to the father, to 
take the path he points out to his sons ; and 
to the minister, to be able to say to his flock : 
" Follow me, as I follow Christ." 

Besides this, I like the wide-spread pub- 
licity which he gives to the whole transac- 
tion. What he does, and what he means 
to do, "he caused to be published and 
proclaimed through Nineveh." One thing is 
certain, he does nothing in a corner. What- 
ever his course may be, there is no shame- 
facedness about it. He had not fled pub- 
lic observation when serving false gods ; 
and he does not mean to flee public observa- 
tion now that he is about serving the true. 
He has no convictions, no purposes, no new 
departures which he is not willing should fly 
abroad, upon the wings of the wind, to every 
corner under the whole heaven. He stood 



58 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

upon the house-tops of Assyria, when, as yet, 
he was in wicked and open rebellion against 
the Supreme Majesty of heaven and earth ; 
and he does not now come down from those 
house-tops, when it is his solemn wish and 
purpose to serve him in truth, with all his 
heart. In public before, he is in public still. 
And in this I say again, he shows himself a 
man, after the pattern of King David him- 
self. 

Nor can I reconcile any other course with 
honesty of purpose, or depth of conviction. 
I can understand the joyful impulse of a 
David when he calls upon the lovers of God, 
" Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I 
will declare what he hath done for my soul." 
I can understand an Andrew going forth, 
like a living flame, in quest of a Peter, or a 
Philip looking up a Nathaniel. I can under- 
stand the woman of Samaria when she gave 
her first wide publishment of the new-found 
Messias. I can even understand this king of 
Nineveh, when, under the fiery preaching of 
Jonah, he saw hell moved from beneath to 



NINEVEH REPENTING. 59 

meet him at his coming ; and thereon was led 
to speak out his worst fears to a guilty and 
excited people. All this is, in a measure, 
plain to me. Such a course has nature and 
religion to recommend it. There certainly is 
no mystery about it. But the reverse of this 
disappoints me. As it is now spread out in 
the history before me, I see all the various 
elements of conviction, faith, gratitude, zeal, 
joy, love, in active and intense operation ; 
and seeing this, I am satisfied. 

But how a man can take one step heaven- 
ward, and plan concealment ; how he can be 
born into Christ's kingdom, and forever stay 
dumb ; how he can travel all the way from 
the City of Destruction to the New Jeru- 
salem, without even being recognized as a 
pilgrim, is to me simply inconceivable. " If 
these should hold their peace," said Christ, 
" the stones would immediately cry out." 
Against such silence, all the elements both 
of the natural and the spiritual man, utter 
a loud and vehement protest. I think, 
therefore, all the better of this king, when I 



60 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

see him utilizing his convictions ; when I see 
those convictions taking form and substance ; 
when I see them dropping into the mould of 
law; when I see them crystalizing into a 
decree ; and when finally, rising up to the 
full height of the occasion, I hear him say, 
" Let that decree be proclaimed and pub- 
lished throughout Nineveh." There is man- 
hood in that proceeding. There is a ring of 
sincerity that all can feel and understand. 
There is a plain and downright way of deal- 
ing with a great emergency, that reminds us 
of one of the hidden forces, in which nature 
must find vent or suffer. I say, therefore, to 
every man in like circumstances, By your 
every conviction of truth, give us the proc- 
lamation. Let us have the publishing. Let 
the flame leap up. Let the light shine forth. 
Let the living waters flow out ; for so you 
shall be saved, man shall be blessed, and God 
shall be glorified. 

In still going on with this subject, we 
come now to the symbol of the fast, and of 
the sackcloth. " Let neither man nor beast, 



NINEVEH REPENTING. 6l 

herd nor flock, taste anything ; let them not 
feed, nor drink water : but let man and beast 
be covered with sackcloth." 

Now to those who are familiar with the 
symbolism of the Bible, all this is exceed- 
ingly clear. It is true that the symbol of 
the fast is one, and that of the sad and dark- 
colored clothing is another ; but in general 
the meaning is sufficiently identical to be 
spoken of as one and the same. Strictly 
speaking, in the public fast sin was more 
immediately confessed, while in the public 
sackcloth, sin was more immediately be- 
wailed ; but these are only different stages 
of the same great spiritual trouble. In the 
one, you see conviction of sin ; but in the 
other, the extreme of grief and sorrow for 
sin. In the one, the accused enters the 
court of Divine justice, pleading guilty to 
every count of the long and terrible in- 
dictment that is thundered forth against 
him ; but in the other, sentence being 
already passed, he is left awaiting its execu- 
tion, but meanwhile, and until the decisive 



62 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

hour is reached, he is silently pleading for 
mercy. 

But knowing how prone we are to merge 
the spirit in the letter, to lose the substance 
in the shadow, and to sink the power in the 
form, I ought to remind you that the symbols 
of Christianity are chiefly important as the 
visible and outward signs of an inward and 
a spiritual life. For as it is written, " Man 
looketh on the outward appearance, but the 
Lord looketh on the heart." With God, 
media are nothing ; nothing is of account 
with him but truth and reality. And so if 
we look now upon the outward countenance 
of these Ninevites, it is only for the purpose 
of examining more closely the inward senti- 
ments and feelings which these outward acts 
are supposed to embody and express. 

I. The symbol of the fast. 

Starting into life, then, under the auspices of 
the king himself, this great revival of the true 
religion is ushered in with a fast of most uncom- 
mon rigor ; and this fast stands here for Nine- 
veh's open, public and hearty confession of sin. 



NINEVEH REPENTING. 6$ 

And truly, the exercise to which Nineveh 
is now called, is a fast indeed ; it is total and 
uncompromising. All fast, for all had sinned. 
No one is exempt from the operation of this 
stern, this inexorable decree. It does not 
spare king or court, age, or sex ; it does not 
spare beasts of burden ; it spares nothing. 
Everybody comes under its jurisdiction, 
passes under its yoke, bows to its burden. 
Men, women, and children ; the strong and 
the weak ; the sick and the well ; the king 
and his subjects ; all fast, and this not only 
from food, but from water. " Let neither 
man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything ; 
let them not feed, nor drink water." And 
this last, especially in that Eastern clime, was 
the sorest suffering of all. The sun glared 
down upon them with intensest heat, and the 
vehement east wind, which some time after 
was beating upon the disconsolate Jonah, 
brought a stream of hot air rushing in from 
the desert, that was more likely to consume 
life than to nourish it ; but no man broke his 
fast, not even from water. 



64 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

Never was such a fast kept by such 
numbers before or since. The owners of the 
animals heard the neighing of the horses, 
the lowing of the herds, and the bleating 
of the flocks, but no man went to their 
relief, no man moved to their rescue. " Let 
them not feed nor drink water." And 
it would really seem from this that the 
convicted men of Nineveh had a certain 
knowledge of the extent of the great apos- 
tasy, that they had heard the deep groan of 
our common humanity, which has gone forth 
into all lands, and which has been taken up 
and sent back, and repeated by all the forms 
of irrational life, compelling us to say, with 
the apostle, that "the whole creation groan eth 
and travaileth in pain together until now." 
In short, that a common sin and a common 
doom called for a common confession. Yea, 
yea, the taint of sin rests on all. Upon all 
the handiwork of God : upon all the elements 
of life : upon all the garniture of this goodly, 
this universal frame, the monster Sin has 
fixed his brand; nothing has escaped the 



NINEVEH REPENTING. 65 

marring and the wrecking. And because of 
this, "the heavens shall pass away with a 
great noise, and the elements shall melt with 
fervent heat, the earth also, and the works 
that are therein, shall be burned up." 

But I discover more than this. I discover 
here, on this day of the right hand of the 
Most High, when all Nineveh is turning to 
God, the assertion of the principle of the 
sovereignty of religion over any and every- 
thing else. I see here the assertion of the 
principle, that in such a crisis of our spiritual 
life, when a man is framing his doings to 
turn to the Lord, it may happen that atten- 
tion to lawful things may even become 
unlawful. I see here the doctrine pro- 
pounded to Nineveh, which had been already 
so vigorously and successfully preached to 
Lot, on the occasion of his leaving Sodom : 
" Escape for thy life. Look not behind thee, 
neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to 
the mountain, lest thou be consumed." It is 
an exhortation to " seek first the kingdom of 
God and his righteousness." It is an admo- 



66 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

nition to drop everything, which in this great 
turning-point of our spiritual history, might 
divert the mind, or divide the attention, 
or dispute the ground with that one thing, 
which, of all others, is the affair of greatest 
moment to an immortal being. It is a chal- 
lenge to seek the Lord our God with the 
whole mind and heart, to the neglect for a 
season, if need be, even of the secular duties 
of our calling. 

On this day, then, of a common salvation 
or destruction, when the precious life of all 
Nineveh is hanging by a hair, the swineherd 
and the cowherd, and all the shepherds of 
Nineveh, are told to leave their cattle to 
themselves, to let go every mortal concern, 
to think of nothing and care for nothing, 
during the slow-revolving hours of a nation's 
doom, but what relates to eternity and the 
things of eternity. If these had cumbered 
before, they must not cumber now. If they 
had been gins and snares and traps to their 
poor souls, they must be such no longer. If 
they had been the daily thorns which choked 



NINEVEH REPENTING. 6y 

and devoured the good seed, and mocked the 
tiller's toil, the time had come when there 
must be an end of such inanities ; for had 
not Jonah said, " Yet forty days and Nineveh 
shall be overthrown ? " 

It is marvellous, indeed, to see what little 
things sometimes come between even a con- 
victed soul and heaven. No wonder that the 
apostle calls after us with such sublime 
urgency, with such heavenly force, to " lay 
aside every weight, and the sin which doth 
so easily beset us, and to run with patience 
the race that is set before us." Undoubt- 
edly, in all this Nineveh had good instructors, 
for was she not thus taught to seek the Lord 
with her whole heart ? And is it not written 
in Jeremiah, " Ye shall seek me and find me 
when ye shall search for me with all your 
heart?" 

II. The symbol of the sackcloth and ashes. 

For to confession of sin, Nineveh now 
joins mourning for sin. "Let man and beast 
be covered with sackcloth." And thus the 
whole city is suddenly turned into a heap of 



68 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

black, every man moving about in a dark, 
dusky shroud, most gloomy and piteous to 
behold. There are few now to go abroad, 
and these the mere ghosts of their former 
selves, moving to and fro in the gloom of 
Nineveh, with woe upon their faces, woe 
upon their garments, and woe upon their 
hearts. And here, again, their very beasts,* 
as if in testimony of the far-reaching effects 
of the first and great transgression, are once 
more made to pass under the rod of a judicial 
sentence ; for they, too, are enveloped in the 
same touching emblem of a great public grief 
and mourning, — " Let man and beast be 
covered with sackcloth." 

Nineveh not only confessing sin, but loudly 
and heartily bewailing it, is the moving 
spectacle which now meets our eye. And 
well might she weep and howl for all the 

* There is a remarkable parallel to this in a Persian 
practice mentioned by Herodotus (IX. 24). In the mourn- 
ing for Masistius, a little before the battle of Plataea, the 
Persian troops not only shaved off their own hair, but simi- 
larly disfigured their horses and their beasts of burden. — 
Rawlmson. 



NINEVEH REPENTING. 69 

miseries which have followed in the train of 
sin, beginning at the first, even until now. 
Bewailing it, as the one giant infelicity of our 
race, for away from this, we should have 
nothing left to bewail. Bewailing it, as we 
bewail nothing else. Bewailing it, as an evil 
of uncounted proportions, first against God, 
and then against ourselves. Bewailing it, as 
the thing which lost earth to God and 
paradise to man. Bewailing its guilt. Who 
shall measure it ? Let the cross and passion 
of Christ answer. Bewailing its defilement. 
Let Job be heard, or Isaiah, or Peter; but 
patriarch, prophet, and apostle bear a common 
testimony and agree in this, that sin is 
"exceeding sinful." Bewailing its power, for 
sin has chains and fetters. Bewailing its 
curse, for its yoke is galling and its bondage 
bitter. Bewailing its work and wages, for it 
has whips and scorpions, death and a grave, 
a judgment and a hell, a wasted life and an 
undone eternity. 

But of all the men who mourned that day 
in Nineveh, there is not one who is so fixed 



yO NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

in my eye as the man who arose from his 
throne and covered him with sackcloth and 
sat in ashes. " He arose from his throne." 
He feels unworthy to sit there. He feels 
that he has forfeited crown and kingdom. 
He feels like the prodigal, when he said, " I 
am no more worthy to be called thy son ; 
make me as one of thy hired servants." 
Upon this awful day, everything is so com- 
pletely reversed with this man, that instead 
of challenging the first place, of his own free 
will and accord he drops into the last. And 
did any man under conviction of sin ever feel 
in any other way ? 

But, "he arose from his throne." I 
suppose, indeed, that just now he felt that 
his proper place was at the footstool, or in 
the place of the condemned ; anywhere but 
in the seat of justice. I suppose, indeed, 
he felt that he had been feeding on ashes, 
and snuffing up the east wind, like the wild 
beast of the desert. I suppose if he could 
have burst forth into an apostrophe, he would 
have said, " Throne of ivory and gold, you 



NINEVEH REPENTING. 7 1 

are nothing now ! Rich and splendid robes, 
blazing with jewels, you are nothing now! 
Swarms of courtiers and fawning abjects, 
you are nothing now, when God is laying 
home to me with stripes, even unto bruising 
and to blood, my own sins, and the sins of 
my people, and the sins of my kingdom." 

And did the world ever appear great to 
any man when the portals of eternity were 
opening to receive him ? Did any trifler ever 
review the wasted years of life, when lying 
down to his last sleep, without thinking of 
that trumpet-stirring appeal of the apostle, 
" What fruit had ye in those things whereof 
ye are now ashamed ? " And what, indeed, 
are all the gewgaw sand baubles of earth to 
a man, in the day of his conviction ? What 
is the whole world to a man at such a time 
as this ? What are all the pomp and pag- 
eantry that he can possibly collect around 
him worth, when he sees the "flaming 
heavens together rolled?" Nothing — less 
than nothing, and vanity. 

These things may amuse us now, in the 



72 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

childhood of our being ; but if ever we become 
men, we shall quickly put away our childish 
things. Paul was once such a child, but Paul 
became a man. On that day of gracious 
revealing we drop them, as the child drops 
the broken toys of the nursery; and with 
outstretched arms we reach up to higher, 
nobler, better things. With what a sober 
judgment we look at objects when this great 
light from heaven is shining all around us ! 
What a putting off, and what a putting on ! 
What a readjustment of our altered relations 
to the near and the distant, to the things of 
sense and the things of faith, to time and to 
eternity ! What a laying down, and what a 
taking up ! 

"The king covered him with sackcloth." 
No man told him to do this. Jonah certainly 
did not. But now that the eyes of his un- 
derstanding are opened, he comes to it as the 
best and fittest thing to be done. On this 
memorable day, when all the haughtiness of 
the man is laid low, he possibly feels that 
there is but one robe in the universe that 



NINEVEH REPENTING. 73 

becomes him, and that is a robe of grief 
and humiliation ; a long, coarse, sad-colored 
garment of camel's hair, made into a sack, 
with holes for the arms, and so worn as to 
drape the entire figure. " He covered him 
with sackcloth." 

Possibly another garment may have been 
his idol. The purple and fine linen may 
have betrayed him a thousand and a thou- 
sand times into sin. Through eye-gate or 
ear-gate, the robe of crimson or vermilion, 
bespangled with jewels, and set off with the 
magnificent shawls, fresh from the looms of 
Persia, and worn as the imposing turban or 
tiara, may have been the "childish things" 
that were luring him into forgetfulness of 
God, and silently but irresistibly leading him 
down to a lost eternity. Such things have 
been. Howbeit, I see in this action of the 
king, the world forsaken, renounced, despised. 
I see in it a turning of his back upon the 
pomps and the vanities, a casting them away, 
an open despising of them, a throwing them 
under his feet, a trampling and a spurning, 



74 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

as if they were vile, that I dare say was 
a very good and a very wholesome discipline 
for his soul. I certainly do not object to it. 
Not in the least. But, on the contrary, I 
accept it, as the true and exact correspond- 
ence between the sorrowful garb and the 
sorrowful spirit. I accept it, as his solemn 
and eternal protest against the lust of the 
flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of 
life. I accept it, as his declaration and his 
testimony, made to God and man, that having 
weighed the world and the things thereof, he 
now renounced them, heartily and forever; 
and for this I honor him. 

"And sat in ashes." Any merit in this? 
Not a particle. But he feels that his place 
is in the dust, and into the dust accordingly 
he gets, as the lowest and meanest position 
to which the human being can sink, thereby 
saying to all his surroundings, These befit me 
better than the throne. The king is infinitely 
low before God. 

And now, returning from these far-off 
Ninevites to ourselves, and dropping symbols, 



NINEVEH REPENTING. 75 

or the things signifying, I come to the thing 
signified. 

I. And, first, of Confession. Touching this, 
I have only to say, that as long as sin is com- 
mitted by us, sin must .be confessed by us ; 
confessed, I say, or we shall bear the burden 
of it forever. And "if we say we have no 
sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is 
not in us." This being so, then I ask, Was 
it ever known that any man was forgiven 
without confession ? Look at the great for- 
given of Scripture : " I confessed my trans- 
gressions unto thee," says David, "and thou 
forgavest the iniquity of my sin." " Father," 
said the prodigal, "I have sinned against 
heaven and before thee, and am no more 
worthy to be called thy son." "Bring forth 
the best robe," says the father, "and put it 
on him." And to this must be added the 
plain teaching of God's word : " That whoso 
confesseth and forsaketh his sins shall 
find mercy; but he that covereth them 
up shall not prosper." Grace abounding to 
the very chief of sinners ; but in Christ's 



^6 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

name we enter by this door, or not at 
all. 

II. Bewailing. I do not say in sackcloth 
and ashes; but bewailing them heartily, and 
never ceasing to bewail them; yea, they 
should be as smoke in our nostrils, and an 
offence forever. Let us learn to bewail our 
own sins, and the sins of our forefathers, and 
the sins of our age and time, and the sins of 
the world ; so that we may come, at last, to 
understand what a grievous and bitter thing 
it is to sin against God. "In that day there 
shall be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as 
the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley 
of Megiddon. And the land shall mourn, 
every family apart ; the family of the house 
of David apart, and their wives apart ; the 
family of the house of Nathan apart, and 
their wives apart ; the family of the house of 
Levi apart, and their wives apart ; the family 
of Shimei apart, and their wives apart; all 
the families that remain, every family apart, 
and their wives apart. In that day there 
shall be a fountain opened to the house of 



NINEVEH REPENTING. 77 

» 

David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, 
for sin and for uncleanness." 

And as these two days go together in the 
word of God, so are they united in the expe- 
rience of the believer. , The day of conviction 
for sin going before, and the day for the 
bestowment of the pardon of sin following 
after. First the wounds of the law, and then 
the application of Gilead's balm of healing. 
And these are the two memorable days in the 
life of the saved man. They are birth eras, 
to which the redeemed will look back in the 
ages to come. In the first of these days a 
sense of sin is fastened upon the conscience 
by the Spirit of God. A blind man is made 
to see. A deaf man is made to hear. A 
stony man is made to feel. A wild man is 
reined up in his downward and headlong 
career; and reined up on the brink of a' 
precipice. 

And thanks, eternal thanks to Him whose 
mercy endureth forever, such an one is not 
left to perish. In that day, as we have seen 
in the prophet's vision, a fountain is opened 



78 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

for the house of David and the inhabitants 
of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness ; 
and the guilty and polluted one is told to 
wash and be clean. And in that same hour 
a new name goes down in the Book of Life. 
A new nature is born into the world. A new 
life is begun on earth. A new candidate 
starts in the race for heaven, and a new song 
goes up to God, " O Lord, I will praise 
thee, for though thou wast angry with me, 
thine anger is turned away, and thou com- 
fortest me." And as I look at all the 
blessings, which of God's free bounty come 
to the broken in heart and the contrite in 
spirit, I have a higher sense of what is 
comprehended in the well-known beatitude, 
" Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall 
be comforted." 



CHAPTER IV. 

NINEVEH PRAYING. 
Cry mightily unto God. 



Jonah 3 : 8. 



Ask and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye shall find ; 
knock, and it shall be opened unto you : for every one that 
asketh receiveth ; and he that seeketh findeth ; and to him 
that knocketh it shall be opened. 

Matthew 7 : 7, 8. 

Men ought always to pray, and not to faint. 

Luke 18: i. 
Continue in prayer, and watch in the same, with thanks- 
giving. 

Colossians 4: 2. 

Is any among you afflicted ? Let him pray. 

James 5 : 13. 

T F ever there was a man who knew the 
"*~ hour and its opportunity, that man was 
the king of Nineveh. If ever there was a 
man whose hand instinctively grasped the 
helm of public affairs in a great moral crisis, 
when the ship was among the breakers, the 
waves and the sea roaring, that man was the 



80 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

king of Nineveh. If ever there was a man 
who came to the rescue just in time to save a 
drowning empire, that man was the king of 
Nineveh. 

I think I do not undervalue the preaching 
of Jonah to Nineveh ; and I am quite as sure 
that I do not overvalue the decree of the 
king and his nobles to the people. That 
decree saved the city and the kingdom. For 
a single day the prophet of evil had been 
prophesying his woe in the midst of Nineveh. 
For a single day his sharp and terrible de- 
nunciations had been ringing out in the 
streets, and under the walls, and on the tow- 
ers, and in the marble palaces of the doomed 
city. For a single day, all Nineveh lay 
stretched before him as a dead man. The 
sentence had gone forth for Nineveh to die. 
The edict was travelling upon the four winds, 
into all lands. The hours were numbered. 
In forty days the very place on which she 
stood, would be reeking like another sea of 
Sodom ; and of the vast multitude then 
lying down and rising up within the walls 



NINEVEH PRAYING. 8 1 

of goodly Nineveh, not one would be left to 
tell the tale. 

Now the impulse that seized the king of 
Nineveh upon the hearing of this, was very 
similar to that which seized upon Abraham, 
when he first learned what was in store for 
Sodom ; with this difference that the king 
had a personal interest in the one, which the 
patriarch had not in the other. But they 
both believe, though in very different de- 
grees, in the sovereign efficacy of prayer; 
and they both promptly lead off in its exer- 
cise. They both believe, too, in co-operative 
prayer, with this difference again, that the 
king finds a better constituency in Nineveh 
than the patriarch finds in Sodom ; by reason 
of which Sodom goes down, while Nineveh 
survives. But king and patriarch are both 
intent on saving, if salvation is possible. 
They both believe in bringing wrecked 
nations and peoples to land. They both 
believe in extinguishing the dreadful fires 
of sin that are burning up the vitals of the 
kingdom. They both believe in driving 



82 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

away the dark clouds that are lowering so 
ominously around them, as smoke is driven 
away by the cold wind from the north. 

But touching the king, of whose decree I 
have taken in hand more especially to speak, 
his proficiency in this spiritual exercise sur- 
prises me. Other men measure up to the 
height of the great argument for prayer by 
slow degrees, by painful and imperceptible 
methods ; but this man comes to it by a leap. 
There is a bound, and he is there. He comes 
to the new life of prayer full grown. He 
preaches, too, as well as prays, and preaches 
in his first sermon like a veteran ; the great 
argument for prayer towering up one mo- 
ment, only to make way for the thundering 
appeal for an instant and mighty reform the 
moment after. 

And here, it must be confessed, the royal 
preacher did his whole duty. He cries aloud 
and does not spare. His trumpet has the ring 
of the true metal, clear, loud, and sonorous. 
And to this it might be further added, that 
he has the two elements of faith and knowl- 



NINEVEH PRAYING. 83 

edge, probably the two highest functions of 
the successful minister, whether of high 
degree or low degree. As to the first, the 
royal preacher undoubtedly believes his own 
doctrine. He has personal convictions; so 
that he preaches the revelations of God made 
to Jonah, with undoubting certainty of mind. 
And then he understands the case before 
him. He knows disease and remedy. He 
comprehends the situation perfectly. He 
measures the whole circumference of Nin- 
eveh's woe at a glance. He sees that an 
intolerable burden of guilt is pressing her 
down to hell. He sees that the great ret- 
ributive Power of the universe is up and on 
his way. He sees that God is coming forth 
from his seat of judgment as a consum- 
ing fire. 

Conscience, too, has now awakened from 
its slumbers, and is glaring fiercely upon his 
sins, and the sins of his people ; and under 
such fiery and scorching manifestations, not 
only are all the powers of his mind excited 
to the highest possible degree, but his whole 



84 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

emotional nature is broken up, like the foun- 
tains of a great deep. But all this is only a 
preparation for what is to come. Girding up 
his loins, therefore, like a man, he now calls 
upon Nineveh to bestir itself in the great 
matter of its salvation ; and with heart and 
mind fully awake and alive to the subject, 
he proposes and carries through such meas- 
ures as the fast,, the prayer, and the reform. 
But let me now enumerate some of the 
leading qualities of the prayer. 

I. The Ninevite prayer is the prayer of 
conviction. 

No man but a convicted man would ever 
pray after that manner. And by a convicted 
man, I mean one who prays from a specific 
sense of want, of sin, of guilt, of danger, of 
wretchedness, with a certain fearful looking 
for of a much worse thing yet to come. 
" Cry mightily unto God/' Every word is 
stirring as the blast of a trumpet. Every 
word is burdened with a deep and fearful 
meaning. Every word is resonant with 
danger and with duty. And the whole 



NINEVEH PRAYING. 8$ 

proceeding is based upon the principle that 
for a man in trouble there is no way out of 
it but by prayer: a principle that would 
answer for a corner-stone in any system. 

The general doctrine is, that when judg- 
ments cry down to man, prayer must cry up 
to God. Pray or perish, is very clearly the 
alternative submitted to Nineveh ; and in one 
form or another, the same thing is submitted 
to every human being. For every man 
prayer is a necessity, a life ; and without 
prayer there is no life, and no possibility of 
attaining life. If unfallen beings, worship 
would still be our first and highest duty ; 
but as fallen beings, and living under the 
mediatorial economy of the gospel, we have 
everything to gain by prayer, and nothing 
to gain without it. To every human being, 
therefore, the text appeals with the greatest 
possible plainness and urgency, saying, " Cry 
mightily unto God." 

But while prayer is at all times the 
bounden duty of the human being, and every 
one is called to its exercise, yet the text pre- 



86 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

sents the doctrine very clearly and strongly, 
that when "the Judge standeth at the door," 
that then, especially, it behooves men to cry 
mightily unto God. And by this I do not 
mean to limit its application to the three 
great judgments of God, known as war, pes- 
tilence, and famine ; but to apply it to all the 
forms of chastening with which our present 
chequered state has made us familiar. 

Perhaps the intimate and profound bear- 
ings of this subject upon the whole economy 
of providence, may justify me in adding a 
word in this connection upon the general 
mission of sorrow in the moral government 
of God. Living, then, under the government 
of a Being who is neither insensible nor 
malignant, I am first of all struck with the . 
fact that the state or condition of trouble 
anywhere within the limits of Jehovah's 
empire, is in the highest degree exceptional; 
not normal, but abnormal. No matter how 
much or how often we see it, trouble is, and 
ever must be, regarded as the trade-mark of 
sin; a mark equally defying counterfeit or 



NINEVEH PRAYING. 8/ 

erasure. The state of trouble is such a wide 
and obvious departure from the original law 
of our being, that we should never cease to 
contemplate it as we contemplate the blotches 
and disfigurements of disease upon a living 
organism. I am very certain that the first 
appearance of it in our world after the fall, 
must have awakened a feeling somewhat 
similar to that which the Israelites felt when 
they said of manna, What is it ? 

It was then, that is, immediately after the 
events spoken of in the third chapter of Gen- 
esis, that such words as " labor," " sorrow," 
"death,"* first came into use, for they follow 
close upon the heels of the first transgression. 
Never before had such words sounded down 
to man. Never before had they been spoken, 
save in the way of warning, in the hearing of 
the new-made orb. Never before had the 
mournful echo been taken up and repeated 
upon the virgin air. But now the sad pro- 
cession began. The three ominous words 

* See Trench on Words. 



88 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

now fell into line, and began their melancholy 
march around our world ; and from that day 
to this they have never ceased nor rested. It 
has been sorrow and labor and death, and 
death and labor and sorrow ; so that in the 
vocabulary of mortals, these and their syn- 
onyms, by which I mean the hunger, the 
thirst, the tire, the tear, the sigh, the groan, 
are just the words that have come into com- 
monest and daily use. 

Now it is in this extended sense that I 
am constrained to say, that for trouble, soul 
trouble, bodily trouble, personal trouble, rel- 
ative trouble, or any other form or measure 
of calamity which may be brought to our 
door, there is no true deliverance but a 
gospel deliverance ; and no gospel deliverance 
but by prayer. Other things are palliatives, 
this only is radical. Other things are sed- 
atives, this is curative. Other things pre- 
scribe for symptoms, this for the disorder, 
the deep-seated malady. Once in the lab- 
yrinth of human perplexity and woe, there is 
but one. way out, and that is by the way 



NINEVEH PRAYING 89 

that opens first into grace, and then into 
glory ; but the door that opens into these is 
the door of prayer. If ever the waves come 
around us to swallow us up, as they one day 
probably will, then the next thing is to cry 
mightily to God ; and the bigger the storm, 
the blacker the sky, the more roaring and 
tumultuous the waves, the more vehement 
should be the cry, " Lord, save or I perish." 

Troubles, indeed, are God's arrows ; and 
when any one of them is discharged, we may 
know that the Omnipotent Archer is after 
us, with a full quiver upon his shoulder. 
There is nothing then but to say, in humility 
and true prostration of soul, "Show me 
wherefore Thou contendest with me ? " 

And to this point God means to bring us 
all. "Lord, in trouble have they visited 
thee ; they poured out prayer when thy chas- 
tening was upon them." In those days they 
poured it out. And the experience of the 
Psalmist has been the experience of a great 
multitude who are now in heaven : " Before 
I was afflicted I went astray, but now have I 



90 NINEVEH AND_ ITS REPENTANCE. 

kept thy word." And it might even be 
asked, What else could we do ? And where 
else could we go ? Truly, if a child does not 
turn to his father in the day of his trouble, 
he never will. And if a blow of God's hand 
does not cause a believer to open his mouth, 
nothing can. I do not now speak of the 
extorted cry of agony and distraction that 
we sometimes hear, from infidels and blas- 
phemers, when the terrors of God's law are 
let loose upon them ; but I speak of that cry 
of penitence "and faith, inwrought by the 
Holy Ghost, and proceeding from a just and 
sober conviction that God is only smiting to 
save, wounding to heal, and casting down to 
lift up. If a man has any sense of God he 
will pray then, and pray his best, if it only 
be to say, in the compressed language of the 
Psalmist, "Heal my soul, for I have sinned 
against thee." Such a heart will then 
struggle toward God, just as the winter plant 
struggles to the light, where there is only a 
beam to welcome it, or here and there a ray 
to make the darkness visible. 



NINEVEH PRAYING. 9 1 

But as already stated, for every human 
being prayer is a necessity, and to prayer 
every human being must be brought, peace- 
ably if God can, forcibly if God must. But 
to be a saved man, he must be made, sooner 
or later, to cry mightily unto God. And you, 
prayerless ones, would do well to heed it. 
Oh, the atheism of the heart that lives with- 
out prayer ! For if we live without prayer 
we live without worship ; but living without 
worship we live without God ; but living 
without God we live without hope. And 
here I stop — just here, on the border of a 
tremendous precipice, I stop ; for if living 
without God and without hope, who may 
gauge the dimensions of our woe ? Who may 
measure the depth of our perdition ? 

Now it is in this view that I glorify God 
for shooting abroad his arrows, for hurling 
forth his thunders, for bringing into requisi- 
tion all the armory of heaven, if need be, to 
put an end to this criminal, this dreadful 
silence of the creature to his Creator. It is 
in this view that I hold God to be a thousand- 



92 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

fold justified in sending a schoolmaster after 
these Ninevites, or after anyone else who 
refuses to open his mouth to him in prayer 
and supplication. I would justify anything 
within the permitted limits of a creature's 
volition and the sovereignty of God, to close 
up, if possible, the existing gulf of moral 
distance between a sinful worm and the great 
God, who is at once the former of his body 
and the father of his spirit. Anything better 
than that this sad, this dreadful atheism of 
the heart should go on, till probation ends 
and eternity begins. And this brings me 
round and back to the point whence I started, 
that the Ninevite prayer is the prayer of 
conviction ; the conviction of men seized in 
arrest for judgment ; of men held over, to be 
brought out on a certain day to be destroyed 
with a great destruction ; of men in trouble 
for sin. And for men in trouble from such 
a cause, or from any other, there is no way out 
but by prayer. " Cry mightily unto God." 

II. The Ninevite prayer is the prayer of 
feeling. " Cry mightily unto God." 



NINEVEH PRAYING. 93 

Now if this prayer is rooted in principle, it 
is also rooted in feeling. The heart prays as 
well as the head ; and if the one is seen, the 
other is felt. The prayer is not a dead 
prayer, but wells up like living water from a 
living spring. If clear thoughts and vivid 
conceptions of divine and saving truth went 
before, profound feeling follows after ; and 
no one in Nineveh is concerned to crush out 
that feeling. None in Nineveh seem afraid 
of being thought enthusiasts or fanatics, 
legalists or evangelicals. Nobody in Nin- 
eveh, on this great occasion, seems fearful 
of an outflow. No one in Nineveh seems 
bereaved of speech. I suppose that, with the 
Psalmist, every one of that repenting multi- 
tude could say, " I cried unto the Lord with 
my voice, with my voice unto the Lord did I 
make my supplication." 

" Cry," said the royal preacher and his 
lusty exhorters, to the people of Nineveh. 
"Cry." But how cry? Cry, as the sick 
cry, or the starving cry, or the blind, or the 
leper in the days of old, a blind Bartimeus, 



94 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

or the Syro-Phenican mother. But whether 
it be a short or a prolonged cry, a low or a 
loud cry, it matters not, only let it not be the 
prayer that goeth forth out of feigned lips ; 
but let it be sincere and hearty. And remen- 
ber, too, that if there be ballast in the ship 
there must be plenty of wind in the sails, or 
the good ship makes no progress. 

III. The Ninevite prayer is also the prayer 
of energy. " Cry mightily ." 

And this word " mightily," more than any 
other, describes the whole force of the pro- 
ceeding. In mechanics it would be the key- 
stone of the arch, or in music the loftiest 
pitch of the instrument ; but as expressing 
the true set of the mind and heart and 
strength, it is a word here of the great- 
est value. "Mightily," with fervency of 
spirit. "Mightily," with fixedness of pur- 
pose. " Mightily," with upliftedness of soul. 
" Mightily," as if in a death struggle. 
" Mightily," as men whose all, here and 
hereafter, is bound up in the issue. 

It is not the minimum degree of earnest- 



NINEVEH PRAYING. 95 

ness, but the maximum; not the lowest 
capacity of prayer, but the greatest. Of the 
three degrees of prayer, it is not the asking, 
nor the seeking, but the knocking. It is 
not so much prayer as supplication. It is a 
summons to carry the suit into the presence- 
chamber of the King eternal, and never 
to leave that presence without winning the 
cause. It is a prayer with an object, and 
that object must be gained. It is a prayer 
with an end, and that end must be accom- 
plished. It is a prayer with a burden in it, 
and that burden must be cast on God. " Cry 
mightily unto God." 

The prayer they are urged to offer is a 
short prayer, as all earnest prayers are ; very 
much in this regard like the prayer of the 
publican, " God, be merciful to me, a sinner;" 
or of the Syro-Phcenician, who cried out, 
"Lord, help me;" or of the sinking Peter, 
who said, "Lord, save or I perish." It is a 
prayer that leaps into life, as all earnest 
prayer leaps, without much attention to set 
forms of speech, without being encumbered 



96 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

with magnificent imagery, or loaded down 
with high-sounding phrases ; but which is 
worked out into experience by the might of 
Him who filleth all in all. 

Now if it be asked, How comes it, that 
men hitherto so unused to prayer, come up at 
once, and in holy energy and boldness take 
their place side by side with a Jacob, a 
David, or any other of the heaven-inspired 
wrestlers of the Bible ? I answer, that these 
men, under the teaching of the Spirit of God 
in the matter of prayer, were men who had 
an errand at the Mercy Seat, and who 
believed in doing that errand, if they did 
nothing else. And that, if I have any knowl- 
edge of the matter, is the true secret of all 
mighty prayer. If a man feels that there is 
work to be done, true, earnest work, at the 
Throne of Grace, he will flee indolence, flee 
the mental lassitude, flee the stereotyped 
phraseology, and begin to wield the weapon 
of instant, constant, all-conquering prayer, as 
one who has within his grasp the power that 
commands success. Such a man may have 



NINEVEH PRAYING. 97 

no other might, but with the might of prayer 
he will work out a deliverance. Such a man 
may be a bruised reed, but he will never be 
a broken one. He may be smoking flax, but 
he will never be quenched as tow. He may 
be a tried man, a tempted man, a suffering 
man, but he will stand up at last a crowned 
king in the presence of his Master. 

"Cry mightily." And in Nineveh they 
did cry, for though feeling about after the 
pillars of truth, like the blind man at Gaza, 
they nevertheless felt that God was a mighty 
being ; and that Nineveh's overthrow would 
be a mighty overthrow, just as her deliver- 
ance would be a mighty deliverance ; and so 
they sought to graduate the leverage of 
prayer to a corresponding plane of energy 
and success. 

"Mightily," too, as men who knew that 
they had a great work to do, and little time 
to do it in, for the forty days would soon be 
up and gone. "Mightily," moreover, in the 
sense of combination, union, for the sake of 
the union ; or, as the mariners would say, a 



98 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether. 
Each for himself, and yet all for one another. 
Each for himself, and yet each as if the life 
of Nineveh lay in the separate hollow of his 
hand. Each for himself, and yet each as if 
the whole vast result was with him, and 
with him only. Each journeying up to the 
Throne of Grace as if he would never come 
down without bearing away and waving aloft 
Nineveh's reprieve and Nineveh's pardon. 
" Mightily," finally, in the sense of an impor- 
tunity that takes no denial. 

And so from morn to night the incense 
cloud was rising. King and court and 
people, young men and maidens, old men 
and little children, were building their altars, 
crowding their temples, and flying as doves 
to their windows. In those dread hours of 
unmitigated gloom, Nineveh did little else 
than pray ; some, like the king, sitting in 
ashes ; some, kneeling w'ith uplifted hands ; 
some alone, or in groups, but each doing his 
part, and every man doing his best. 

And just such mighty prayer has ever had 



NINEVEH PRAYING. 99 

power with God, and has prevailed. O what 
victories it has achieved ! What triumphs it 
has celebrated ! What evil it has averted ! 
What good it has secured ! What service it 
has rendered to individuals, to communities, 
to nations, to the Church, and to the world ! 
I stop not now to discuss theories of prayer. 
I stop not to talk about the mysteries of 
prayer. I stop not to ask how prayer works 
amid the grand purposes of God. Why not 
ask how such things as electricity and grav- 
itation work among the occult forces of 
nature ; elements so imponderable in them- 
selves, and yet holding the very ends of the 
universe in their fist ? 

The truth is, I have but little patience with 
the dreary platitudes to which we are some- 
times compelled to listen, from persons pro- 
fessing to be wise, about the modus operandi 
of prayer. The modus operandi of prayer, 
indeed ! Alas, alas, when we can explain any 
one of the thousand riddles of daily life — 
when we can penetrate the commonest mys- 
teries of our being, physical or intellectual — 



IOO NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

when we have gone up to the heights or 
down to the depths of the cosmos around us, 
then may we cease from nature, and soaring 
up to the great Author of our being, demand 
of Him, the inscrutable, the unfathomable, 
the eternal, to make plain to us certain 
problems in the moral government of God. 
Vain man would be wise. 

Meanwhile, the facts of six thousand years 
concerning the doctrine with which I am 
now dealing, are before us ; and as Baconians 
in religion as well as in science, we must 
make these facts to govern our philosophy, 
and not employ our cheap philosophy to 
batter down our facts — facts which have 
made no mistake, have committed no error, 
and to which can attach no just suspicion 
of error. And looking now to prayer as a 
tried thing, a known thing, a demonstrated 
thing, with all the light that revelation has 
shed upon it in the shape of precept, promise, 
and example, I should stultify myself if I 
failed to recognize it as the great working 
power of Christianity. 



NINEVEH PRAYING. 101 

And touching the particular quality of 
prayer comprehended in the phrase of " crying 
mightily," I am bound to declare that at this 
very moment it is the prayer which is needed 
most of all. The prayer of specific objects, 
the prayer of intense desire, the prayer of an 
earnest expectation, the prayer of a concerted 
union, the prayer that ever waits and watches, 
"more than they that watch for the morn- 
ing ; " this is the fashion of prayer now 
needed to usher in the brightest morn on 
which the sun ever shone. And why not 
have it ? Why not cry mightily ? Why not 
lift the gates and let the floods of salvation 
roll down ? The Being to whom we pray is 
a mighty Being ; the Name in which we come 
is a mighty Name ; and the ends we seek to 
accomplish are ends that will redound to the 
highest glory of God forever. And looking 
forth from our watch-tower, upon the present 
and future battle-fields of God's Israel, I 
cannot but covet earnestly the best gifts in 
this hallowed exercise, both for the times in 
which we live, and for the times that follow 



102 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. . 

after. I mean the prayer that will call forth 
the whole strength of our common Christen- 
dom ; the prayer that will engage us, absorb 
us, swallow us up, in every feeling of the 
heart, in every power of the mind, in every 
faculty of the soul. "After this manner, 
therefore, pray ye." 

IV. Moreover, the Ninevite prayer is the 
prayer of directness. " Cry mightily unto 
God." 

The prayer takes a straight line to God. 
Like the arrow of a skilful archer, it hits its 
mark. There is nothing timid, nothing cir- 
cuitous, nothing vague, nothing impersonal in 
this great offering in the interests of Nin- 
eveh. If the personality of God was never 
before realized, if is realized now. God, 
the invisible Being, is addressed as though 
visibly present before them. They do not 
cry to others. They do not cry to them- 
selves. They do not cry to the idols of the 
heathen, but they lift up their hearts to Him 
who is God over all, blessed forever and 
ever. 



NINEVEH PRAYING. 103 

" Cry mightily unto God." The doctrine 
here is of highest, supremest interest to 
man, that of a direct, living, personal inter- 
course between each separate human soul 
and God. It is the doctrine which has come 
down to us in the abundance of the revela- 
tions, that "there is one God, and one 
mediator between God and man, the man 
Christ Jesus ;" and that whoever approaches 
the King of heaven through the merits of 
this one mediator, is made a king and a priest 
unto God. "Of him are ye in Christ Jesus, 
who of God is made unto us wisdom, right- 
eousness, sanctification and redemption." 

This, then, is the common ground of be- 
lievers ; the platform on which we all stand 
and rejoice in the unity of the spirit, in the 
fellowship of the saints, and in the strength 
of a perfect bond. If God is my king, my 
judge, and my lawgiver, my dealings are 
with him, and him only. If I have violated 
law, I know whose law. If there is a hand 
lifted to strike, I know whose hand. If there 
is a holy arm that bringeth salvation, I know 



104 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

whose arm. In all this vast concern I see 
God, and I see none besides him ; and after 
the God-man, the man Christ Jesus, I will 
allow no other to come between me and God. 
As to any man like myself stepping forth to 
serve me as a volunteer daysman, I decline 
him. I refuse him. He is an impertinence. 
Men may supplement me in other things, but 
they cannot supplement me here. Men may 
supersede me in other things, but they cannot 
supersede me here. This direct intercourse 
with God through Christ his Son, is my 
business ; meaning to say, that it is the busi- 
ness of every man to remember that religion 
is a personal dealing between God and each 
individual human soul. " Cry mightily," said 
this heathen king — if we may call him 
heathen after this ; " Cry mightily unto 
God/' 

But this view of the subject is not peculiar 
to the king of Nineveh and his nobles ; 
the theology is the theology of David, also. 
"With thee," says the Psalmist, "is forgive- 
ness, that thou may est be feared." And in 



NINEVEH PRAYING. 105 

that passage I not only see where the for- 
giveness is, but I see a reason why that 
forgiveness has never been suffered to shift 
hands ; why the sublime prerogative of pardon 
has never been trusted to mortal man. The 
ground taken by the Psalmist is that the 
pardoning power of the universe is the 
greatest power of all, and therefore to be 
feared most of all. " With Thee is forgive- 
ness, that Thou mayest be feared." Tell me 
whose hand holds the pardons, and I will tell 
you where the worship will go ; and this being 
so, God would no more give that power to a 
miserable worm of the dust, than he would 
give his loftiest glory to another, or his 
worship to graven images. "O Thou that 
hearest prayer, unto Thee shall all flesh 
come." 

Woe, then, to the men who turn aside 
prayer from God ! Infallible fallibles ! Blind 
leaders of the blind ! How deep the ditch 
into which ye shall fall ! The men of Nin- 
eveh will rise up to condemn you ; and every 
man who has been taught the blessedness of 



106 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

direct intercourse with God, will join to swell 
the loud peal of thundering condemnation 
upon all sorcerers who seek to pervert the 
right way of the Lord. 

How inexcusable, then, if with such a lock 
and key, any of us should at last be bankrupt, 
either of grace or glory. I see before me all 
the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hid 
in Christ since the foundation of the world ; 
and with the help of the key of promise, fitted 
by the Holy Spirit to the golden lock of the 
golden gate of the New Jerusalem, I may 
now enter the world of grace, as an outer 
apartment of the world of glory. Blessed 
thought ! O what a grand inheritence is laid 
up in Christ for the true Israel of God ! The 
question is, Shall I open? Shall I see the 
gate "on golden hinges turning," as I press 
the key of promise into each separate ward of 
the lock, or shall it stay shut forever ? Shall 
I bear a part in crying mightily unto God, or 
shall I fold my arms and do nothing ? How- 
beit, prayer is indispensable to us all. " For 
all this will I be enquired of by the house of 



NINEVEH PRAYING. 107 

Israel, saith the Lord." The promise is to 
him that asketh, to him that seeketh, to him 
that knocketh to such, but to none other. 

Once more, then, I submit, shall we have 
the prayer, the fervent, effectual prayer that 
availeth much ? or shall prayer be dumb until 
the forty days are up, and the great over- 
throw is upon us ? God forbid ! Alas for 
the prayers that are offered up amid the 
hurry and confusion of the last hours of a 
mortal's life ! The prayer of the midnight 
seekers, in the parable, availed them nothing ; 
and no man is wise who leaves heaven to the 
mercy of a peradventure. What I now plead 
for is first the act and then the habit of 
prayer ; for without the habit the solitary act 
will avail but little. And the more as the 
occasions for prayer are numberless, coming 
up every day and hour. The needs of prayer 
are indeed so many and so great that I 
marvel not that Holy Scripture calls upon us 
to "be instant in prayer," to "continue in 
prayer," to "pray always," to " pray without 
ceasing," to "pray all manner of prayer;" the 



108 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

prayer of ejaculation, the prayer of the closet, 
the prayer of the family, and the prayer of 
the great congregation. 

Where is the living man who is full, and in 
need of nothing ? In need of nothing ? Then 
have we come to our inheritance and our 
rest ; but this is not so, for the Canaanite 
is still in the land. Then pray, yea, cry 
mightily unto God. If in perplexity, pray. 
If in difficulties, pray. If in perils, pray. If 
we have wily adversaries, pray. If the day 
of disappointment has come, and " the winter 
of our discontent " is upon us, let us pray. 
Have we arduous duties and but little 
strength ? Then pray. If things are at a 
stand, at a dead lock, if we know not what 
to do, if, like mariners in a fog, we cannot 
see a ship's length before us, then let us cast 
out all anchors and wait for break of day. 
But in every state, still watch and pray. 

Or if we want to make grand strides in 
progress, pray. If we want the oil of glad- 
ness, pray. If we want a daily anointing with 
fresh oil, pray. If we want to bring heaven 



NINEVEH PRAYING. IO9 

down to earth, pray. If we want to feed on 
angels' food, pray. If we want a feast of 
holy desires, holy love, holy fear, holy trust, 
then pray ; and it will be done unto us accord- 
ing to that gracious promise, "Blessed are 
they that hunger and thirst after righteous- 
ness, for they shall be filled." 

I go not beyond this schedule of personal 
wants, though these that I have named, com- 
pared with those that I have not named, stand 
as a unit to a host. To your closets, then, 
O Israel ; and remember, for your comfort, 
that Christ goeth there before you ! Never 
will you go there but you will find him 
waiting your arrival. You may not see him, 
but he is there. You may not hear a foot- 
fall, but he is there. You may not catch a 
ray of the excellent glory, but he is there. 
You may not see a lineament of his majestic 
countenance, but he is there. O stretch 
forth your hands and grasp him !> He is 
there watching you, listening to you, and 
saying to you, " Prove me now and see if I 
will not open the windows of heaven and 



110 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

pour you out a blessing that there shall not 
be room to contain." Be not faithless, but 
believing. 

Happy is the man who has been taught to 
love prayer, and to delight himself in suppli- 
cation. In the life of every such man there 
is a first prayer and a last prayer. There is 
a time when, with rapturous plaudits, it is 
said in heaven, "Behold, he prayeth;" and 
then there is another, when, with folded 
wing, the recording angel writes over against 
him, "The prayers of David, the son of 
Jesse, are ended." And these bo^bks of 
prayer are the volumes which God keeps in 
perpetual remembrance before him ; and from 
their ample page no prayer of publican or 
saint is ever blotted out, world without end. 

Seeing, then, the wondrous vitality of 
prayer, let us take heed how we pray. Let 
us remember that as is the praying now, so 
will be the song and the shouting hereafter. 
Let us remember that prayer, to be availing, 
must be offered here, and not in the grave, 
or at the judgment. And finally, when we 



NINEVEH PRAYING. Ill 

begin to chronicle or sum up the mighty 
achievements of prayer, I am sure the prayer 
that saved Nineveh from its awful doom will 
deserve, and doubtless will find, conspicuous 
mention ; and yet, never until the mystery is 
finished and the whole record given in, will 
any soul know how much, instrumentally, 
prayer has wrought, in saving men from the 
wrath to come. 



CHAPTER V. 

NINEVEH TURNING. 

Yea, let them turn even'- one from his evil way, and from 
the violence that is in their hands. 

Jonah 3 : 8. 

Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man 
his thoughts : and let him return unto the Lord, and he will 
have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abun- 
dantly pardon. 

Isaiah 55 : 7. 

Therefore also now, saith the Lord, turn ye even to me 
with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, 
and with mourning : and rend your heart, and not your 
garments, and turn unto the Lord your God : for he is 
gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, 
and repenteth him of the evil. 

Joel 2: 12, 13. 

Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no 
pleasure in the death of the wicked ; but that the wicked 
turn from his way and live. 

EZEKIEL 33: II. 

A~T"VHE order of development in the gra- 

~^- cious exercises of the repenting Nin- 

evites, is both just and striking. It is as 

the growth of the blade, the ear, and the full 



NINEVEH TURNING. 113 

grown corn in the ear ; it is beautiful as the 
light that springeth forth into the perfect 
day. First came the preaching of Jonah, 
thundering and crashing on its way, over- 
turning hills and mountains with one blast 
of his trumpet : " Yet forty days and Nin- 
eveh shall be overthrown." And there he 
stopped. 

But when Jonah ended, Nineveh began. 
First Jonah and his preaching, and then, as 
the rain follows the lightning with the rent 
clouds, on came the praying ; and the preach- 
ing that does not compel the praying is a 
failure. It is clouds without water. Let it 
never be forgotten, that preaching of what- 
ever quality, however apostolic or seraphic or 
trumpet-tongued, and though delivered by the 
Master of Assemblies himself, is a means and 
not an end ; and that end is never reached 
until it is made the power of God unto sal- 
vation to him that believeth. In its way, it 
is important and even indispensable, for 
"how shall they hear without a preacher?" 
But having heard, the next thing is to believe 



114 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

the report ; and without such a belief, without 
such a hearty acceptance of the message, the 
mere hearing, like a religion without charity, 
profiteth nothing. Our theory of the sermon 
requires us to honor it, as one of the God- 
appointed agencies of salvation ; and in so 
honoring it, we honor the Master and his 
cause. But when we go beyond this, when 
we attempt to invert the true order, and 
make it an end instead of a means, then we 
fashion an idol, which God may any day 
shatter in pieces. 

Meanwhile, Nineveh is crying mightily to 
God. The great wrestle has begun. The 
incense cloud is rising. The loud knocking 
at the Gate of Mercy is heard both on earth 
and in heaven. Men are panting and thirst- 
ing and crying out for the living God. And 
this is well. But now to go one step further : 
praying itself, like the ministry of the word, 
is only a means and not an end ; and woe to 
the man who confounds the means with the 
end. For what are holy exercises without a 
holy life? "If I regard iniquity in my 



NINEVEH TURNING. II5 

heart," said the Psalmist, "the Lord will not 
hear me ; " and this one fundamental condi- 
tion of successful prayer was never more 
clearly stated than in that memorable verse. 
But what if we regard iniquity in the life ? 
What if the devout prayer fail to inspire 
the devout conduct ? Of what value is it ? 
What is the food that does not nourish, or 
the water that does not satisfy, or the fire 
that does not warm, or the balm that does 
not heal ? All vanity and toil. And so the 
grand end of all was not answered until the 
king and his nobles pitched their exhortation 
to a yet loftier key, and were heard crying 
aloud to their fellow sinners of Nineveh, 
"Let them turn every one from his evil 
way, and from the violence that is in their 
hands." 

And this gave the loud Amen to their late 
professions. This was the true token which 
even men could understand, and which a just 
and holy God might deign to accept. This 
was the outward and visible sign of an inward 
and spiritual work ; the depth and genuine- 



Il6 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

ness of which become more manifest as we 
proceed with the history. 

Now in dealing with this passage, several 
things are to be considered. 

I. Nineveh discovers that sin is an evil. 

II. This conviction becomes general 
throughout Nineveh. 

III. The awakened conscience of Nin- 
eveh is made to feel the weight of individual 
offences. 

IV. This Great Awakening heralds a 
mighty reform. 

I. Nineveh discovers that sin is an evil. 

"Let them turn every one from his evil 
way." And assuredly, without such a con- 
viction no man would ever turn at all. A 
man must see that he has committed an evil 
before he can be expected to take measures 
to put it away. A knowledge of the sickness 
must precede the knowledge of cure. A 
sense of sin must go before the sense of 
pardon. And in this case, under the illumin- 
ating power of the Holy Spirit, this much 
was comprehended by the repenting king and 



NINEVEH TURNING. 117 

his nobles, that it was an evil and a bitter 
thing to sin against God ; and this became 
the groundwork of the exhortation, " Let 
every man turn from the eviloi his doing." 

That they saw the whole evil of transgres- 
sion at that time, and in that first opening of 
the understanding, is not probable. Men 
seldom do; perhaps never. This is not 
God's method of revealing himself in any 
human soul ; for it is in grace as in nature, 
where we have first the dawn, then the morn- 
ing, and then the perfect day. Indeed, a 
man must be far advanced upon the upward 
course before he sees all the evil of transgres- 
sion. The weak eye of a newly awakened 
man could hardly endure the whole of that 
ghastly discovery, all the rottenness that is in 
his bones ; nor do I suppose that the whole 
truth with respect to the enormity of sin will 
ever be fully known this side the judgment- 
seat of Christ. Job was a veteran when he 
said, "I have heard of thee by the hearing of 
the ear, but now my eye seeth thee : where- 
fore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and 



Il8 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

ashes." Isaiah was the anointed of the Lord, 
and a prophet accepted in Israel, when he 
cried out, " Wo is me ! for I am undone ; 
because I am a man of unclean lips, and I 
dwell in the midst of a people of unclean 
lips : for mine eyes have seen the King, the 
Lord of hosts." And the apostle Peter had 
seen miracle upon miracle, and heard sermon 
upon sermon from the lips of the blessed 
Master, before that memorable day when con- 
viction smote him, and he fell at his feet, 
saying, " Depart from me, for I am a sinful 
man, O Lord." 

Still, these repenting Ninevites saw enough 
to make them feel as the sons of the prophets 
felt, when one came and cried out to Elisha, 
saying, " O thou man of God, there is death 
in the pot." They saw the clouds gathering 
thick and fast over Nineveh, and they knew 
what made them gather. They saw the fire 
of heaven about to fall, and utterly consume 
both them and their substance ; and they 
knew the sins which had provoked the Lord 
to jealousy, and made his wrath to burn like 



NINEVEH TURNING. 1 19 

fire. They saw the earth about to open and 
swallow them up, and they knew what opened 
the mouth of the great abyss. Wherefore 
said the king, Let us turn from the evil of 
our way. And to enforce his exhortation, 
giant phantoms, in the form of Guilt, Re- 
morse, Wretchedness, Misery, Despair, rose 
up and strode across their path, and throw- 
ing their arms wildly aloft, warned them to 
advance at their peril. All Nineveh was 
aroused. A cry, a shout of Halt ! passed 
from rank to rank of the advancing columns, 
in the onward and the downward march ; and 
the guilty city was reined up on the brink 
of a tremendous overthrow. 

II. This conviction becomes general through- 
out Nineveh. 

" Let them turn every one from his evil 
way." Every one. A sermon with an indi- 
vidual as well as a universal application. 
Every one. The net is so thrown as to 
enclose the whole multitude of Nineveh, both 
great and small. Every one. As in a 
besieged city, not one is suffered to escape. 



120 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

Not one is suffered to go out or come in 
without submitting to the yoke of an immedi- 
ate and hearty reform. 

Now there is a day in the religious life 
when we live with the windows up and open ; 
and in those days we poor mortals are very 
observant of others. We are busy with our 
notes and queries. But there is another day 
when the window is down, when the shutters 
are closed, when the blinds are closely drawn, 
when the inhabitant of the solitary guest- 
chamber is still, and when, like Saul of 
Tarsus, we are blind to everything but what 
is passing within. On those days we are 
never abroad. And following this law of the 
kingdom, on this great occasion Nineveh is 
at home. The Spirit of God, indeed, suffered . 
nothing else. At such times he permits no 
diversion. He enjoins strictest attention to 
ourselves, while the grand inquest is being 
held over our own moral state and standing 
before God. When that question is decided, 
other questions may come up ; but until it is 
disposed of, until it is settled upon a sure 



NINEVEH TURNING. 121 

and well-ordered basis, other things must bide 
their time. In this respect there is no differ- 
ence between the father and the son, between 
the ruler and the ruled, between him that 
serveth God and him that serveth him not ; 
for we must all appear before the judgment- 
seat of Christ, that every one may receive the 
things done in his body, whether it be good 
or bad. Every one. The individuality of the 
human being comes out in all the critical 
periods of life, the great crises of our history ; 
in the day of our repentance, no less than in 
the day of our final and solemn account. 

III. The awakened conscience of Nineveh is 
made to feel the weight of individual offences. 

"And from the violence that is in their 
hands." Conviction deepens as it narrows. 
In the beginning of this new moral survey, 
the attention was fixed upon the generic 
character of transgression ; and all Nineveh 
was moved with the discovery that the gen- 
eral course of Ninevite conduct was evil, only 
evil, and that continually. But now they had 
gone far enough in their character of ex- 



122 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

plorers to bear a new discovery; and the 
Spirit of God accordingly holds up before 
them a full-length portrait of the monster sin 
of Violence. 

A picture was brought out, and every man 
in Nineveh knew that picture. There was 
the bloody nest and its eagles. There was 
the den with its human wolves and tigers. 
There was the habitation of dragons, the 
hold of every foul and unclean spirit. And 
as the picture was held up to the popular 
gaze, every murderer, every bloody man, every 
ferocious man, every throat-cutting man that 
walked the streets and palaces and gardens of 
Nineveh knew it ; and at that time Nineveh 
was a city of murderers. Every liar knew it ; 
and at that time Nineveh was a city of liars. 
Every robber knew it ; and at that time Nin- 
eveh was a city of robbers. Every idolater 
knew it ; and at that time Nineveh was a city 
of idolaters. 

And truly there was sense in that preach- 
ing. There was pertinence in that preaching. 
There was fidelity in that preaching. There 



NINEVEH TURNING. 1 23 

was life from the dead in that preaching. 
It was preaching that meant something. 
The bow of the king and his nobles was not 
drawn at a venture. A burning coal was let 
fall upon the newly awakened conscience of 
these Anaks in sin ; and every man in Nin- 
eveh roared again with the disquietude and 
the pain that was upon him, for the coal was 
a live coal of juniper. 

But this is as it should be. For what is 
the use of a John the Baptist if he does not 
prepare the way ? What is the use of a Saul 
if he does not hew Agag in pieces ? A 
mistaken lenity spares him ; and then the 
meek-eyed prophet is left to do the work 
of the recreant and pusillanimous king. The 
heart of this Samuel is indeed white as milk 
and tender as infancy ; nevertheless, when the 
honor of God required it, his shoes were iron 
and brass, and with his feet he stamped out 
the last of Amalek. And what is the use of 
the pulpit when it fails to be a reprover 
either of men of high degree or men of low 
degree? What becomes of the chivalry of 



124 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

the pulpit when it is bold as a lion in flying 
at the sins of a thousand years ago, or a 
thousand years to come, but mumbles with 
the toothless decripitude of senility in the 
presence of the sins that God sent it to 
reprove and to threaten ? Away with such a 
pulpit from the face of the earth ! We have 
no use for it, and there is no good use to 
which it can be put. It may attract the bolt, 
but it can never draw it off. Like the salt 
which has lost its savor, it is thenceforth 
good for nothing but to be cast out and 
trodden under foot of men. 

The pulpit, the legitimate pulpit, in the 
sober use of its just powers, has a God-given 
commission to cry aloud, to spare not, to lift 
up its voice like a trumpet, and "show the 
people their transgressions, and the house of 
Judah their sins;" and when it is faithful to 
that trust, it is the true conservator of all the 
great interests of law and order; it is the 
chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof. 
Nor should it be slow to blow the trumpet in 
Zion, or to sound the alarm in Jerusalem. It 



NINEVEH TURNING. 125 

should not wait for the actual coming of the 
grand upheaval. It should not wait till all 
the pillars of the social fabric are crumbling 
and falling about us. It should not wait for 
the mighty disruption to heave and yawn in 
our very midst ; but in good season give the 
warning cry that is to put every man upon 
building his ark or seeking his shelter. Noah, 
that watchful sentinel of a wonderful crisis 
in human affairs, did it for a hundred and 
twenty years before the storm burst ; and in 
this regard, according to all that Noah did, 
so should we. 

And touching what may be called class 
sins, or dominant sins, the moral epidemics 
of any given time or country, the pestilential 
simoons of the desert, Which ever and anon 
come up and sweep over us like a cloud ; this 
may be said, that they answer as face to face 
in a glass. There was a day when the whole 
earth was filled with violence ; and God said, 
"The end of all flesh is come before me.*" 
And there was another day when Nineveh, 
that great and mighty city, was filled with 



126 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

violence ; and God said, The end of Nineveh 
is come before me. It was the high-water 
mark of transgression ; and when it touches 
that mark, ordinarily God suffers the flood to 
rise no higher. 

Other sins, indeed, beside violence may do 
the work of sappers and miners. In the case 
of Sodom and Gomorrah, the sins to which 
pre-eminence is given are "pride, fulness of 
bread, and abundance of idleness." It was 
not violence, in the year that king Uzziah 
died, that made a residence in Jerusalem a 
peril and a woe, but uncleanness. " Woe is 
me," said the prophet, "for I am undone; 
because I am a man of unclean lips, and I 
dwell in the midst of a people of unclean 
lips." 

But putting all these historical experiences 
together, we may see the sins that provoke a 
battle with the Lord God Almighty : the sins 
that he will not away with, in any people 
under heaven : the towering, the appalling, 
the monster sins that he has but to behold, 
to make him whet his sword, and bend his 



NINEVEH TURNING. 1 27 

bow, and strike forth like a mighty man of war, 
to cast down every adversary. Sabbath-break- 
ing is one of these sins. Pride is another. 
Profanity is a third. Drunkenness is a fourth. 
Dissoluteness is a fifth. Because of such 
things the land mourneth ; and the real ene- 
mies of a land, the moral assassins of a nation, 
are not the prophets who cry against such 
things, but the people who commit them. 

But in each and every case of individual 
conviction for sin, a great moral end and 
purpose may be answered by holding up the 
glass to any flagrant departure from the law 
of the Lord our God, of which we may have 
been guilty. Of course the memory will be 
painful to us. It will be as gyves to the 
limbs, and thorns to the flesh. It will cast 
down every high imagination, and compel us 
to sprinkle ashes upon the head. It will give 
us a taste of the great mourning of which 
Zechariah speaks in his prophecy, but that 
again will compel us to look on him whom we 
have pierced ; and in that day there will be a 
fountain opened to us, as well as to the inhab- 



128 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

itants of Jerusalem, and in that fountain we 
shall wash and be clean. 

No man ever yet began and kept up that 
exercise for any considerable time, without 
soon finding out that the presence of that one 
fatal scab, was only a prelude to the breaking 
out of a universal leprosy. No man ever yet 
began this search for the unholy leaven, by 
fixing his eyes upon one single act, without 
presently discovering that the whole of life 
had been one great sin. He would not jour- 
ney far into this unknown land, without start- 
ing up an ambush on every side. Thoughts 
would surprise him. Words would surprise 
him. Acts would surprise him ; not one, or 
ten, or twenty, but innumerable. And it 
would not be the guilt of sin only, or the pol- 
lution of sin only, or the bondage of sin only, 
or the deceitfulness of sin only, but all 
together, until the sum of his transgressions 
would be infinite, and the burden would be 
hard to bear. No man, indeed, can go far in 
that direction, without being made sensible 
that the whole of life has been a constant 



NINEVEH TURNING. 1 29 

withholding of himself from the love and 
service of the Creator ; and no man who 
knows what God is in himself, or what God is 
to us, as Creator and Redeemer, but will 
return from that search with an arrow, the 
poison of which will be sure to drink up his 
spirits. 

IV. This Great Awakening heralds a 
mighty reform. 

" Yea, let them turn every one from his 
evil way, and from the violence that is in 
their hands." 

Now I will suppose that the great argument 
for turning in the case of Nineveh was clearly 
seen, and strongly put, and fully compre- 
hended ; but I will venture to say that all this 
time there was the most perfect accord be- 
tween the internal convictions of these men 
of Nineveh, and the outward exhortation of 
the king and his nobles. I mean by this, that 
the ^conviction at that time in the mind of 
every true penitent in Nineveh, was that he 
must either turn or perish ; and furthermore, 
that not a moment was to be lost in the turn- 



130 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

ing. It was now or never. And I refer to 
this just here, because I do not believe that 
any man ever came to God without similar 
convictions, not only with regard to the abso- 
lute necessity of turning, but of turning at 
some given time and place ; the heart, the 
understanding, and the conscience all echoing 
back to that saying of the Holy Ghost, 
" Behold, now is the accepted time ; behold, 
now is the day of salvation." All convic- 
tions that stop short of this are lost con- 
victions. 

Howbeit, the call here to turn is peremp- 
tory. It is decisive. It is final. The case 
is not even up for argument. It is decided 
already, and that by a tribunal from which 
there is no appeal. " Turn ye, turn ye, for 
why will ye die, O house of Israel," intimat- 
ing most clearly that the house of Israel must 
either turn or perish. The necessity lies in 
the state of the case. Man is a fallen being, 
and he must turn. The understanding, the 
imagination, the memory, the reason, the 
will and the affections are all depraved, and 



NINEVEH TURNING. 131 

he must turn. He is alienated from God by- 
wicked works, and he must turn. He is a 
being of detestable tempers, earthly, sensual, 
devilish ; and he must turn. God is holy ; 
and therefore he must turn. God is just; 
and therefore he must turn. God is faith- 
ful; and therefore he must turn. God is 
immutable ; and therefore he must turn. 
God is all-powerful ; and therefore he must 
turn. 

The men who lived before the flood would 
not turn, and they went down. The five 
cities of the plain would not turn, and they 
went down. The Pharaoh of Egypt, the 
stiff-necked, the stout-hearted, and the rebel- 
lious, would not turn, and he went down. 
And now our time has come, for judgment 
is nigh, even at the door. "Yea, let them 
turn," said the decree, "every one from his 
evil way, and from the violence that is in 
their hands." Of two gates, the wide and 
the strait, we have entered the wide instead 
of the strait. Men of Nineveh, we must 
"turn" Of two ways, the broad and the 



132 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

narrow, we are unmistakably in the broad 
way that leadeth to destruction, and not in 
the narrow way that leadeth unto life. Men 
of Nineveh, we must " turn." Of two mas- 
ters, God and the Devil, we have chosen the 
hard service and the cruel master, instead of 
the light yoke and the easy burden. Men of 
Nineveh, we must "turn." The law of God 
requires it. The whole plan, even of tem- 
poral salvation, requires it. No man ever 
was, or ever can be saved, without compli- 
ance with it. 

" Let the wicked man forsake his way, 
and the unrighteous man his thoughts : 
yea, let him return unto the Lord, and he 
will have mercy upon him, and to our 
God, for he will abundantly pardon." But 
that wicked man must forsake his way, and 
that unrighteous man must abandon his 
thought, or the coveted mercy will not come. 
"Wash you," says the prophet, "put away 
the evil of your doings from before mine 
eyes ; cease to do evil, learn to do well." 
But with God, nothing counts without the 



NINEVEH TURNING. 1 33 

washing. And this is the grand condition 
of saving, alike in the Old and the New 
Testament Scriptures ; nor can anything 
different ever be substituted, without violat- 
ing the essential principles of the moral 
government of God. 

It is no weak expedient, therefore, no half- 
way measure, that this truly enlightened man 
proposes for the salvation of Nineveh ; but 
a reform that is both sweeping and universal. 
He puts the axe of moral reform close to the 
root of the tree, and then calls aloud to 
every woodsman in the forest of Nineveh, 
" Hew down the tree, and cut down the 
branches." The fist of wickedness must 
cease to smite. The voice of a brother's 
blood must cease to cry. The blade of the 
assassin must cease to drip. The robber 
and the violent must cease from violence. 
The man who stole, must steal no more. 
Men of Nineveh, we must "turn." With- 
out this turning, the sackcloth is nothing. 
Without this turning, the sitting down in 
ashes is nothing. Without this turning, the 



134 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

severe fast is nothing. Without this turning, 
the wailings and the bleatings of all the 
sheepfolds of Nineveh, or of all Assyria, are 
nothing. Without this turning, even the 
mighty crying to God is nothing ; all nothing 
without the turning, the putting away of sin, 
the ceasing to do evil. " Rend your hearts, 
and not your garment," says the king. 
" Turn ye, turn ye." 

And since these things are so with respect 
to the people of Nineveh ; do they not also 
apply to ourselves as well ? Nay, may it not 
even hereafter appear, that as we are weighed 
in somewhat different scales from those of our 
ancient neighbor, we may have a yet higher 
interest in this subject than the generation 
itself, to whom this impressive sermon was 
preached ? 

For is there not an " evil way " of which 
every man may be presumed to know some- 
thing? I speak not now of besetting sins, 
of some evil way that may be characteristic 
of the individual ; a way of levity, or of 
worldliness, or of profanity, or of drunken- 



NINEVEH TURNING. 135 

ness, or of licentiousness, or of scorning, or 
any other way that may serve to give a 
certain stamp, a certain port and bearing 
to us, as transgressors of God's holy law. 
All this is certainly very shocking; but I 
speak now more especially of the sin of our 
nature, the sin of our race, the sin that at a 
certain time is common with us all ; the 
settled habit of ungodliness, as exhibited in 
the whole life and conduct of the impenitent, 
the unrenewed, and the unforgiven. "To 
you, O men, I call, and my voice is to the 
sons of men." This is the evil way of which 
I speak, and to which I would for a moment 
call your attention. 

Sin is an evil, and the greatest possible 
evil ; an ill, and the greatest possible ill. It 
is the sum of all ill, past, present, and to 
come. It is an evil, and beside it, viewed as 
a cause, there is none other. It is the 
greatest possible offence against God, and 
therefore an evil. It separates between God 
and man, and therefore is an evil. It sys- 
tematically and continually breaks God's holy 



I36 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

law, and therefore is an evil. It incurs awful 
and unending penalties, and therefore is an 
evil. It has crucified the Son of God, and 
therefore is an evil. 

All this has come upon us, and the end is 
not yet. But with the crown taken from our 
head ; with the noblest image ever conferred 
upon created being, marred and broken ; 
with an alienated heart, and a blinded under- 
standing ; with our whole nature seized and 
held in arrest for judgment, unless indeed we 
have obtained justifying grace, through the 
blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ ; 
with all this evil upon us, and incorporated 
into every element of our being, every man 
must see that sin is not a small thing, and 
cannot be thought a small thing, without our 
first making shipwreck of faith and reason. 
Indeed, I know of nothing about us that does 
not need to be made over. "The whole 
head is sick, and the whole heart faint. 
From the sole of the foot, even unto the 
head there is no soundness in it ; but wounds 
and bruises, and putrefying sores : they have 



NINEVEH TURNING. 1 37 

* 

not been closed, neither bound up, neither 
mollified with ointment." 

And now, building upon this as a founda- 
tion, I would say, By every consideration 
that can address itself to the reason, the 
conscience, the understanding ; by every 
appeal that can be made to the thinking man, 
or the emotional man ; by our hopes, and by 
our fears, by our loves, and our hates, by our 
desires, and by our aversions ; by duty, by 
interest, by comfort, by honor, by time and 
by eternity, let us now, with one accord, 
frame our doings to turn to the Lord with 
heart, and mind, and soul. With the gra- 
cious ability that God has given us, turn we 
can ; and with the divine immutability con- 
fronting us, turn we must, or perish. Om- 
nipotence himself cannot compromise in this 
matter. There is an attribute of his nature, 
for example, which requires him to take 
knowledge of sin. There is another attribute 
which compels him to punish sin. There is 
a third attribute which compels him to hold 
one position, and one only, upon this whole 



138 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

subject of maintaining law and order in his 
moral universe ; for God is without variable- 
ness or the shadow of turning. A change in 
moral plan or purpose, with him, is impossible. 
And " how can two walk together, except they 
be agreed ? " And if we walk not with God 
here, with whom shall we walk hereafter ? 

It remains, therefore, that we turn. God 
is infinitely, immutably, eternally right ; and 
we are wrong, all wrong, utterly, hopelessly 
adrift upon a great sea of error, and we must 
get back into port, or we shall be adrift for 
ever ! The Just and the Holy One is upon 
one side of this gulf of separation, and we 
are upon the opposite ; and as the holiness 
there and the sin here are irreconcilable, we 
must put away the sin, or where He is we 
cannot come. The decision is with us, and 
the issue is plain and direct, but the conse- 
quences are unspeakably awful ; for whether 
we know it or not, the choice falls at last 
between the pruning-hook of mercy here, or 
the hewing-axe of an utter and irretrievable 
overthrow hereafter. 



NINEVEH TURNING. 1 39 

And further, what is done in the premises 
must be done quickly, or not at all. Take 
one of a thousand examples of a ruinous 
delay. A few months ago, a gentleman in 
easy circumstances, but cumbered with much 
serving, was entreated to give his heart to 
God. " Yes," said he, " I will, but not now. 
My hour of leisure and opportunity will be 
the coming Christmas, and then I will do all 
that you desire." Was that so ? Christmas 
came, but instead of leisure it brought tur- 
moil ; instead of ease, pain ; instead of life, 
death. In Christmas week he died ; he 
died, but as the record goes, he did not 
ttcrn. 

Oh, let us stand and plead before the 
great mountain of a creature's will ! In 
tones as sweet as angels use, if we had them, 
or loud as thunder, if we had the voice of 
majesty and strength ; we would not only say 
now, but imperatively ask, Why not now ? 
God says it ; but we, triflers with opportunity 
and with destiny, say to-morrow, meaning 
thereby a rude and indefinite postponement 



140 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

of the whole matter. " God now com- 
mandeth all men everywhere to repent ; " 
and do we consider the horrible evil we com- 
mit against the Supreme Authority of 
heaven and earth, when we name a future 
time in the place of an immediate and a 
present ? God calls upon us to refuse the 
pleasures of sin ; and he means it. God calls 
upon us to renounce the Devil and all his 
works ; and he means it. God calls upon us 
to turn to Him with the whole heart and 
soul ; and he means it. And any delay after 
he has spoken, whether in command, or 
promise, or threatening, is rebellion. Any 
delay to hearken or obey, is contempt. 
Any delay to move on or move up, if that is 
the summons, is God-defying and hell-pro- 
voking, and may at any moment open upon 
us all the vials of his wrath and indig- 
nation. 

Surely, we do not mean to have Him for an 
Adversary. Surely, we would not challenge 
the Almighty to battle. Surely, we do not 
propose to measure arms with God. Do but 



NINEVEH TURNING. I4I 

consider the puniness of man ! Do but 
consider the resources of Omnipotence ! In 
such an unequal strife, we would go down 
like the bubble on the wave. Where is our 
lightning ? Where our thunder ? Where 
our weapons, to strike at the greatest and 
best Being in the universe ? All rottenness 
and dust ! Of such a rising we might well 
say with the Psalmist : 

"He that sitteth in the heavens shall 
laugh : the Lord shall have them in derision. 

"Then shall he speak unto them in his 
wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. 

"Thou shalt break them with a rod of 
iron ; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a 
potter's vessel. 

" Be wise now, therefore, O ye kings : be 
instructed, ye judges of the earth. 

" Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice 
with trembling. 

" Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye 
perish from the way, when his wrath is kin- 
dled but a little. Blessed are all they that 
put their trust in him." 



142 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

But do not forget what is written, and 
what has been quoted as the conclusion of 
the whole matter, That God now command- 
eth all men everywhere to Repent! 



CHAPTER VI, 

NINEVEH HOPING; OR, THE FAITH OF A 
PERAD VENTURE. 

Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away 
from his fierce anger, that we perish not ? 

Jonah 3 : 9. 

And he said, Oh, let not the Lord be angry, and I will 
speak yet but this once : Peradventure ten shall be found 
there. And he said, I will not destroy it for ten's sake. 

Genesis 18 : 32. 
A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall 
he not quench, till he send forth judgment unto victory. 
And in his name shall the Gentiles trust. 

Matthew 12: 20, 21. 
For she said within herself, If I may but touch his 
garment, I shall be whole. 

Matthew 9: 21. 

And if I perish, I perish. 

Esther 4: 16. 

A VIVID perception of God will bring 
"^ ^~ a man to repentance, if repentance 
is in him. When God is far off, we sin 
without restraint ; and when he is nigh, we 
stand in awe and sin not. In the very worst 



144 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

of times, God has only to show himself in 
the manifested energy of his nature, and 
the whole earth keeps silence before him. 
Everything in the moral world depends 
upon the far or the nigh with respect to 
God. When Nineveh forgat him, she made 
vast strides in sin. She went whole lengths 
in transgression. She ran out the last link 
of her chain. She cast away all the cords, 
overcame all the restraints, overleaped all 
the hedges by which individuals and com- 
munities are ordinarily kept from desperate 
bounds in wickedness, and ran greedily in 
the highway to ruin. 

Of course this became intolerable. It 
was not to be borne. It could not be suf- 
fered. The very sight and being of Nineveh 
became offensive. Like a dead thing cast 
out of the grave, the putrid carcass lay 
festering and rotting in the sun, the wild 
winds as they went by, carrying the death- 
poison into all lands. 

But at last a long-suffering God awoke to 
judgment. The King of kings hurled a 



Nineveh hoping. 145 

thunderbolt at Nineveh ; and it is this light- 
ing down of his great power which gives a 
clue to the whole subject. Now be it 
remembered that with God — the conditions 
being unchanged -*- to threaten is to execute. 
With him, words are things. Speaking, 
then, in his name, and in his behalf, Jonah 
was instructed to say, Yet forty days, and 
Nineveh shall be destroyed. And from that 
moment, in the eye of the law, the wicked 
city might be considered as blotted out. 

It was as if God had commanded the earth 
to open and swallow her up. It was as if he 
had called to the lightnings, and the light- 
nings had answered, Here are we. It was 
as if he had cried aloud in the hearing of 
every man in Nineveh, I will make you a 
desolation, a perpetual void among the king- 
doms forever. 

And nothing prevented just such a catas- 
trophe but the long-suffering kindness of 
God, which led him to put yet forty days 
between the edict and its execution ; for in 
that time Nineveh changed her whole front 



I46 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

and bearing. But what I now lay stress upon, 
is the immediate cause of Nineveh's great 
awakening : for it is this with which I am now 
dealing, and for the present with this only. 

It will be noticed, then* that from the day 
that Jonah opened his commission, Nineveh 
was not idle. The first peal that goes 
booming over the devoted city, brings her 
down. The Assyrian capital hears, and 
starts up alarmed. In a moment she is in 
the dust before God. The dead bones 
rattle. Flesh comes upon her, and breath 
enters into her. The Spirit of the Lord is 
seen sweeping through the valley, and the 
breath from the four winds is continually 
rising in force, majesty, and power. But 
that which makes the stir and the movement 
in this great valley, that which brings the 
dry bones together, that which makes the 
whole plain to be instinct with resurrection, 
life, and power, is the fact that Nineveh has 
won back her belief in God. "Nineveh 
believed God." That is the record : and out 
of this belief in God are born all the ele- 



NINEVEH HOPING. I47 

ments of the new life that is now passing 
before us. 

On the very day that it went down in the 
record-book of Life, that " Nineveh believed 
God," she began to rise up, and presently 
stood forth reprieved. From that moment 
all was changed. The thunder dropped its 
muttering. The storm ceased to beat, and 
the wind to howl. A bow spanned the 
heavens. No sooner had she determined to 
retain God in her knowledge, and to do 
works meet for repentance, than the whole 
body of heaven was again seen in its clear- 
ness. But this was the pivot of destiny. 
Everything turned on this. 

And now I ask, What is a man, or 
what is a kingdom without God? Take 
the first chapter of Paul to the Romans 
for an answer. Take the condition of 
the whole heathen world for an answer. 
Take the experiment wherever it has been 
tried — as in France — for an answer. 
Give up God, and states relapse into bar- 
barism. Give up God, and man drivels 



I48 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

to the idiot, or sinks to the brute or the 
devil. Give up God, and conscience has 
no spur ; reason, no guide ; self-denial, no 
motive ; virtue, no safe-guard ; death, no 
waking; immortality, no hope. Give up 
God, and no star rushing back to primeval 
night and chaos, is more hopelessly lost and 
gone. Give up God, and we are eternally 
adrift under a black cloud and on a troubled 
sea, without anchor or chart, or helm or star, 
to light us on our way. 

Give up God, and then comes the rep- 
robate mind. Then comes the darkening 
of the foolish heart. Then come vain imag- 
inations. Then come vile affections. Then 
comes the Monster Man of the outside 
world ; the man whose masterly picture was 
once taken by an apostle, and which needs 
no second limner to eke out the likeness. 
The man whose tread, wherever heard, is 
the tread of doom. The man who once 
walked the streets of Sodom. The man who 
came around the ark in the days of Noah, 
and went down with the world of the 



NINEVEH HOPING. I49 

ungodly. The man who sat at the table 
with Belshazzar when the handwriting came 
out upon the wall. The man, whose reap- 
pearance in any mart or kingdom, is an evil 
omen ; and who is never seen, but as the 
foretokener of a storm, and the provoker of 
a judgment. The man, who after so long a 
time is everywhere known, and should be 
everywhere labelled as the wrecker of states, 
kingdoms, and peoples. The man who is 
ever working with an energy truly Satanic, 
and who at divers times and in divers places, 
has almost achieved a success in turning 
earth into a hell ! 

And now it was at just such a crisis, just 
such a pass as this, that God by his prophet 
strode across the path of Nineveh, and filled 
up the whole field of her vision. He put 
himself directly in the way. He bade the 
guilty city look at him in the sublime per- 
sonality of his being, and in the awful blaze 
of his perfections. He bade her listen to 
him in the thunder of his voice. As with 
Egypt, so with Assyria, "He bowed the 



150 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

heavens and came down : and darkness was 
under his feet. And he rode upon a cherub 
and did fly : yea, he did fly upon the wings 
of the wind." 

Indeed, this wonderful history takes no 
step forward without him : and the Monster 
Man of Nineveh is continually confronted 
with the majesty of the ever-living and true 
God. And the effect of this exhibition of 
the Supreme Majesty upon the devoted 
city is immediate and decided. Instantly, 
old things pass away. In a moment, all is 
changed. God is seen, God is felt, God is 
apprehended ; and now there is fear where 
there was no fear ; feeling, where there was 
no feeling; prayer, where there was no 
prayer; amendment, where there was no 
amendment ; hope, where there was no hope. 
And this leads me to say that religious 
instruction is valuable, just in the degree 
that God is all in all ; and, touching preach- 
ing generally, I am bold to declare that no 
sermon is small with him, and none can be 
great without him. 



NINEVEH HOPING. I 5 I 

Now in the continuance I observe that 
Nineveh, first and last, had a two-fold view of 
God ; and that both these views are essential 
to a just and comprehensive conception of 
the Being with whom we have to do. 

I. Nineveh saw God in the reign of law. 

The new era of Nineveh's reform begins 
here. From the first appearance of Jonah 
upon the scene, the guilty city not only 
had a general and profound conviction of 
sin, but also of this other fact, that under 
the moral government of God sin would be 
punished. This new and startling revelation 
was borne home to the mind and con- 
science of the whole Assyrian capital ; and 
probably for the first time she was made 
to feel that she had a Ruler, a Governor, a 
King, the King of kings and Lord of lords. 
And further, that the Being with whom she 
was now so suddenly confronted, was a 
Being of unspotted holiness, of unbending 
justice, of an inflexible purpose, and of an 
awful majesty. And finally, that God was 
not only now holding her to a strict account- 



152 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

ability for the past, but that in a certain 
sense she was finished, — that she was 
already weighed in the balance and found 
wanting. 

For once Nineveh felt that she was in the 
grasp of God. No wonder that "fear took 
hold upon them there, and pain as of a 
woman in travail. Thou breakest the ships 
of Tarshish with an east wind." The storm 
that was now blowing about the "ships of 
Tarshish," was wrecking the vanity of the 
creature, and laying low the haughtiness of 
man. But all this, in the exceeding kind- 
ness of God our Saviour, was preparing the 
way for great and glorious results. Here 
were the roaring breakers ; but beyond was 
the quiet haven. Nineveh had a vision of 
law, as an emanation from God. Nineveh 
had a vision of law as a rule of conduct, 
operating as such in heaven above and on 
earth below. Nineveh had a vision of law, 
as describing the orbit in which each may 
revolve, thereby ensuring the order and 
completeness of the whole moral universe. 



NINEVEH HOPING. 1 53 

Nineveh had a vision of law in all the energy 
of its rebuking power, going forth as a 
schoolmaster to bring us to God, and brist- 
ling with awful and eternal sanctions. 

Possibly she saw more than this. And if 
not then, possibly after. The time may 
have come in which she saw law as an eternal 
rule of right, passing along the shining 
throng of angel and archangel, and after 
making the circuit of the heavens, coming 
down to earth, and applying a certain meas- 
urement of the same measuring rod to one 
and all. "Thy will be done, as in heaven, 
so on earth." Submission to God being the 
rule here, there, and everywhere, from the 
rising of the sun to the going down of the 
same, and that forever and ever. 

Now the effect of all this discovery of 
God's law to Nineveh was very wonderful. 
For only consider the facts in the case. 
Here was a city, graceless and godless, 
abandoned to idolatry, and on its downward 
march from infamy to infamy. Here was a 
city full of the leprous scabs of fraud, and 



154 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

violence, and lust, untamed of man, and 
defiant of God. Here was a city on which 
the heavy night of ignorance and sin was 
brooding, and where humanity, trampled and 
trodden under foot, lay bleeding at every 
pore. And now, in the name of all that is 
vital to the hopes and happiness of man, I 
submit, What shall be done unto this city ? 
With the whole head sick, and the whole 
heart faint, where shall we apply the healing 
balm ? With what armor, and with what 
weapons, shall we go out to meet an army of 
liars, and robbers, and murderers, all foes to 
God and enemies of man ? 

For be it remembered that there is a law 
in the moral government of God, which 
conditions the national life of any race or 
people to their fidelity to the great trusts 
committed to their care. "For the nation 
and kingdom that will not serve thee shall 
perish ; yea, those nations shall be utterly 
wasted." That is the law, clearly put and 
plainly spoken. Nor has that law ever been 
abrogated, or modified, or grown obsolete. 



NINEVEH HOPING. 1 55 

It has been in force from the beginning, and 
is in force still. By its operation Egypt has 
perished ; Babylon has perished ; Assyria 
has perished. That one sovereign edict of 
heaven has blotted them all out from the 
roll of nations. By it great cities, too, have 
perished. Sodom and her sister cities of 
the plain have gone down in the fiery vale 
of Siddim. Nay, the world itself has been 
swept by a flood of waters. And justly. 
When all is known concerning these defunct 
cities, and rotten empires, and apostate 
peoples, the sober and enlightened verdict 
of a just and impartial universe will be ready 
with their noble vindication of the great 
Judge of all the earth: "Just and true are 
thy ways, thou King of saints." 

All this is true ; but in the history before 
us, Nineveh has not yet reached her doom. 
The end has not yet come. The last sands 
of a nation's life have not yet run out. And 
though it is seen and felt that Nineveh is 
now in the crisis of her destiny, yet as we 
all know and feel, the things impossible with 



156 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

men are possible with God. And now sud- 
denly God shoots an arrow at her, and lo, 
she is wounded. He touches her with the 
rod of his strength, and she cries out as 
if in the pangs of dissolving nature. He 
makes bare his holy arm, and the proud 
city turns pale at this new and unwonted 
exhibition of Infinite power and wrath. 
God sends his prophet to cry in the hear- 
ing of all reprobate people, Repent, or 
Perish. The issue is briefly and fairly 
made. There is no middle course, and no 
third question. It is life or death, saved or 
lost, — nothing intermediate between the two 
states. Nor is any time to be wasted in the 
answer. The decision must be immediate, 
It is now or never. 

This was the preaching of Jonah to Nine- 
veh, and long centuries after, when He 
who was greater than Jonah, or a thousand 
Jonahs, was speaking of that memorable 
occasion, He filled up the outline by saying 
that " Nineveh repented at the preaching 
of Jonah." Yes, repented ; for through the 



NINEVEH HOPING. 1 57 

mighty power of the Eternal Spirit, with 
Nineveh just then to hear, was to hearken ; 
and to hearken, was to obey. She did not 
say with Pharaoh, " Who is the Lord, that 
I should obey his voice," but with this new, 
this just, this overwhelming view of God as 
the great Executive of the universe, she 
cried out, " Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, 
and glorify thy name ? for thou only art 
holy ; for all nations shall come and worship 
before thee ; for thy judgments are made 
manifest." And this, I say, was a vision of 
God in the reign of law, and without just 
such a discovery it is certain that Nineveh 
would have gone down, when the forty days 
were up, with her sister cities of the plain. 

No law, no gospel. "The law of the 
Lord," says the Psalmist, "is perfect, convert- 
ing the soul," and that law on this occasion 
did its work wisely and well. It "made 
wise the simple." It "enlightened the eyes." 
It reined up the heedless. It not only 
proclaimed the judgments of the Lord, but 
showed those judgments to be "true and 



I58 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

righteous altogether." Nor did it cease its 
work until the way was thoroughly prepared 
for another vision of God, to which I now 
come. 

II. Nineveh saw God in the reign of grace. 

" Who can tell," says the king in his proc- 
lamation, "if God will turn and repent, and 
turn away from his fierce anger that we 
perish not ? " Now I admit, as we all must, 
that this is not a very full gospel to preach 
to a despairing people ; but it is a thousand 
times better than none. Nineveh is not 
clear upon the pardon question, and no 
wonder, for neither God nor man has spoken. 
She believes fully in the condemning power 
of the law, as well she may ; but what of the 
gospel ? She sees the angel standing over 
her with the drawn sword ; but where are 
the lips of grace ? She sees the cloud com- 
ing up fast over the land, and big with 
uncommon wrath ; but not the sign of a bow 
in the cloud. 

And this being so, the wonder is that she 
should hope at all. We read that "faith 



NINEVEH HOPING. 1 59 

cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word 
of God ; " but here there is neither voice 
nor vision. And yet, wonderful to say, 
hardly has Nineveh heard the moan of the 
storm, and the rushing of the tempest, before 
she takes refuge in that perfection of God 
which blotteth out iniquity, transgression, 
and sin. Such a speculation in faith is a 
root out of dry ground. It is one of those 
sublime ventures of a convicted soul, at 
which the more we contemplate, the more 
we marvel. Jonah revealed the righteousness 
of God ; but who reveals to this sin-stricken 
people the righteousness of faith ? 

I know what drives them to fear ; but what 
allures them to hope ? I comprehend the 
agency that set king and noble crying 
mightily to God ; but who discerns that one 
spot of light in the heavens above, which 
to them is just what the light-house is to 
the mariner in the storm ? "Who can tell," 
says the king, " if God will turn and repent, 
and turn away from his fierce anger, that we 
perish not ? " 



l60 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

Here is a faith without the supports of 
faith, the warrants of faith, or the examples 
of faith. Here is a whole city holding fast 
to a golden chain, when, to the eye of sense, 
no golden chain has been let down in their 
midst. Here is a population, travelling up 
and down the ladder uniting earth and 
heaven, when, as yet, no vision of patriarch 
has revealed the existence of such a ladder. 
And yet it is so. There is but one refuge 
in the universe from the bursting storm ; but 
they have found that refuge. And there 
is the wonder. There is but one plank 
between them and the roaring abyss ; but, 
marvel of marvels ! they are on it. There 
is but one rock high enough to shelter them 
from the overwhelming flood ; but they have 
already escaped to it. There is but one life- 
boat in the wide ocean for the shipwrecked 
nation, but king, nobles, and people are all 
in it. "Who can tell," say they, " if God 
will turn and repent, and turn away from his 
fierce anger, that we perish not ? " 

Now you observe that the appeal here is 



NINEVEH HOPING. l6l 

to the compassion of God ; an appeal, which, 
I venture to say, never yet went sounding 
up to his ears in vain. " That we perish 
not." That is the mighty argument on 
which they rely, to plead their cause with 
the offended Majesty of heaven and earth. 
And this is what I call a vision of God in 
grace, as well as in law. Ignorant of a 
thousand things of which the most casual 
reader of a full-grown revelation is presumed 
to know; yet they do not believe that God 
has any pleasure in the death of a repenting 
sinner. Most evidently God, who has inspired 
the mighty hope, is now leading them to a 
safe and happy knowledge of himself. 

Through all the awfulness of that Being 
who has come down to deal with them for 
their sins, yet they have vision to discern 
something of that divine quality of mercy 
on which we are now dwelling. Amid the 
thunderings of conscience, the quakings of 
guilt, and the terrors and distractions of an 
imminent judgment, there is a heavenly 
voice within, encouraging and prompting 



1 62 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

them to go up and touch the sceptre of the 
King of kings and Lord of lords. 

And of all the words in the vocabulary of 
mortals that might have been chosen for 
the purpose, none could have been more 
effective than the four words already quoted : 
"That we perish not." Ah! but that is 
the mighty impelling motive that moved God 
to send his only begotten and well-beloved 
Son into the world, that we might not perish, 
but have everlasting life. That, too, is the 
very word with which Peter awoke the sleep- 
ing humanity of our Lord, in the storm upon 
the Sea of Galilee : " Master, Master, carest 
thou not that we perish ? " Oh, let any man 
but speak that word in the ear of God, as 
Peter spoke it, or as these Ninevites spoke 
it, and he may be well assured that if it be 
possible for God to save from overthrow, he 
will. Little, little indeed do we know, after 
all, of the riches of God's compassion for 
lost and perishing men ! We speak of a 
river ; but a river may run dry. We speak 
of an ocean ; but an ocean can ebb as well 



NINEVEH HOPING. 163 

as flow. We speak of the waters of a flood ; 
but in revolving months even the waters of 
a flood may retire from off the face of the 
earth. Not so with God's compassions, for 
they are illimitable. "The mercy of the 
Lord is from everlasting to everlasting unto 
them that fear him, and his righteousness 
unto children's children." 

Upon one point, indeed, the repenting 
city is as clear as the sun at noonday. They 
do not ask God to lower the requirements of 
his just and holy law to a level with their 
dark and downward way. That be far from 
them. Properly enough, the culprits surren- 
der to the judge, and not the judge to the 
culprits. They ask for no turning, till, first 
of all, they turn from sin ; and none then, 
until they complete the measure by turning 
to God. But after this full and complete 
surrender to their offended Law-giver and 
Judge, they venture an appeal for mercy. 
Upon this complete reversal of moral posi- 
tion, they now inquire, If God will not turn 
from the fierceness of his anger, that they 



164 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

perish not ? But what I delight to notice is, 
that at every step of this solemn transaction, 
God's authority, God's government, God's 
law, are recognized, honored, and upheld, as 
in heaven, so on earth. They come to the 
Infinite Majesty of heaven and earth with no 
dishonorable conditions, or mean require- 
ments, or corrupt cravings, either in their 
hearts or on their lips ; but, with every feel- 
ing of a repentant nature, seeking to main- 
tain the law and to make it honorable. 

Now it will be seen from this, that, if at 
this juncture of affairs the faith is not 
strong enough to remove mountains, it is, 
nevertheless, a living principle. A weak 
faith, undoubtedly, because it has none of 
the supports of a plain revelation ; and there- 
fore, instead of walking up boldly to the 
Throne of Grace, as we are wont to do, it 
goes about its great mission like a blind 
Samson, groping among the pillars. A weak 
faith again, undoubtedly, because it does not 
rest, as we have seen, upon a certain knowl- 
edge of God's word, but only upon a pre- 



NINEVEH HOPING. l6$ 

sumed knowledge of God's character. A 
weak faith, finally, because all its metes and 
bounds are described by a peradventure. 

Nevertheless — and now we turn the 
shield, — the Ninevite faith is a true faith, 
because there is nothing in the work of the 
Spirit upon the heart at variance with the 
testimony of the Spirit in the Record ; and 
the appeal here, and everywhere else, to the 
Law and the Testimony, must be final. But, 
a true faith further, because the work of faith 
is manifest, seeing it saves the sinner from 
his sins, and delivers all Nineveh from going 
down into the pit. And the faith that does 
this is not to be questioned, for it has power 
with God and prevails. The tree is known 
by its fruits. No man, certainly, should 
doubt a faith that wrestles with sin and 
overcomes it — a faith that sets him upon a 
course of godly discipline and self-denial — a 
faith that puts God's mark upon all his pro- 
ceedings and endeavors ; but we may well 
doubt a faith that comes short of this. 

Now, judged by these tests, Nineveh cer- 



1 66 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

tainly is not wanting. The trembling people 
honor God by hoping that he is merciful ; 
and God honors the hope by showing that he 
is abundantly so. Nineveh believes that in 
God " mercy and truth meet together, right- 
eousness and peace kiss each other ; " and 
God ordains that Nineveh shall be an eter- 
nal example of the great doctrine she 
believes and accepts. If, therefore, at this 
period Nineveh is not over sanguine of God's 
mercy, she at least resolves never to despair ; 
and it is so, that just here, in the very begin- 
ning of this mighty faith-venture, the heavy 
clouds begin to scatter, and light to fall on 
the weeping and prostrate city. God bids 
her, "Go in peace, and sin no more." 

It will be seen from all this, that the ques- 
tion with which we are now dealing, is not, 
primarily at least, the repentance of Nine- 
veh, for that is conceded ; but her faith, and 
that faith the faith of a peradventure. Upon 
her turning, as a means of averting the fierce 
anger and the swift destruction, there is, 
we repeat, no difficulty; none whatever. 



NINEVEH HOPING. 1 67 

Upon this they are deeply convinced and 
fully purposed. But being turned, it remains 
to be seen whether they will obtain the 
mercy they implore. Already they have 
resolved that if they perish, they will perish 
repenting; but now, under a mighty impulse 
from heaven, they go further, and resolve 
that if they perish, they will perish hoping. 
And this, undoubtedly, is the grandest stride 
of all. It is the faith-venture which bringeth 
salvation. It is the strait gate through 
which we enter the kingdom. 

And now from Nineveh we turn to our- 
selves. It will be remembered that the 
question with Nineveh, in a certain conjunc- 
tion of her national life, was, Whether upon 
repenting, salvation was possible ; and about 
this the guilty city had grave and mighty 
misgivings. " Who can tell," said they, " if 
God will turn and repent, and turn away 
from his fierce anger, that we perish not ? " 
And when the king asked that question, 
there was not a man in all Assyria who 
could answer. Howbeit, as we have seen, 



1 68 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

they obtained mercy ; and for this overflow 
of the Divine compassion, the church of God 
will bless his holy name for ever and ever. 

But what I now aim to show is, the close, 
personal bearing which all this has upon our- 
selves ; for we, too, belong to a sinful and a 
sinning race, according to that Scripture 
which declares that " we have all sinned, 
and come short of the glory of God." And 
what was law then, with regard to trans- 
gressors and transgression, is law still ; and 
what was grace, or favor shown to the 
unworthy, is grace still. And so we stand 
facing these great questions to-day. 

And now I will suppose that the present 
issue is not the turning, for that, we would 
hope, is decided already ; but the faith, 
which means that when a man is truly con- 
trite for his offences, and so far as he knows, 
or is able, is trusting in Christ for salvation, 
whether he may be rationally and scriptur- 
ally assured that he will come at last to the 
desired haven. And speaking to that ques- 
tion, and that only, then we may boldly say, 



NINEVEH HOPING. 1 69 

and that upon the highest authority in the 
universe, that " He that believeth on the 
Son hath eternal life." Or, as the great 
apostle of the Gentiles puts it to the Philip- 
pian jailor, "Believe on the Lord Jesus 
Christ, and thou shalt be saved." Or, as 
the blessed Master himself declares, " Him 
that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast 
out." And if the question still is, "Who 
can tell ? " then we say that these scriptures 
of the Old and ^New Testament can tell, 
plainly and authoritatively, that "God so loved 
the world, that he gave his only begotten 
Son, that whosoever believeth in him should 
not perish, but have everlasting life." These 
are the true sayings of God, and,, undoubt- 
edly, are meant to give strong consolation 
to all who have fled for refuge, to lay hold 
upon the hope set before them in the 
gospel. 

And, if corroborative testimony is invited 
or required, then God has provided for that 
also, for "ye are my witnesses, saith the 
Lord ; " and every pardoned sinner in the 



170 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

universe, from righteous Abel on, can testify 
in sweetest, loudest chorus, that " the Son of 
Man hath power on earth to forgive sins," 
and that " he is able to save to the uttermost, 
all that come unto God by him, seeing that 
he ever liveth to make intercession for us." 
They, one and all, trusted in God that he 
would deliver them ; and he did deliver them, 
and carried them safely through and over, 
and put them down in the land flowing with 
milk and honey. 

And yet, looking now to the final result of 
human probation, we incline to think that 
the supreme difficulty, after all, in the way 
of our common salvation, is not so much 
positive unbelief, nor yet hardness of heart, 
as that fatal habit of procrastination which is 
ever saying with Felix to the wooing Spirit 
of God, and to all the messages of eternal 
truth and love, " Go thy way for this time ; 
when I have a convenient season, I will call 
for thee." Men with clear convictions and 
unbiased minds, intend to take certain steps ; 
but not now. They mean to knock at the 



NINEVEH HOPING. 171 

gate of mercy ; but not now. They mean to 
strike the harp, and bow the knee, and cry 
"All hail to Jesus of Nazareth;" but not 
now. They mean to be " called after Jacob, 
and surnamed after Israel ; " but not now. 
They mean to be saved ; but not now. 

Oh, when the shadows of time shall have 
forever fled and gone, and the dread realities 
of eternity have fully opened, how many will 
bewail the awful infatuation that led them to 
wait for that more "convenient season," of 
which Felix spake to Paul. It never came 
to the Roman governor, and we may be 
sure it will never come to us. There is an 
accepted time ; but that accepted time is 
now. There is a day of salvation ; but that 
also is now. As it is written, " To-day if ye 
will hear his voice, harden not your hearts." 
Only let it be to-day. No more of that fatal 
to-morrow. God calls To-day. 

" Just as I am, and waiting not 
To rid my soul of one dark blot, 
To thee whose blood can cleanse each spot, 
O Lamb of God, I come ! I come I " 



CHAPTER VII. 

NINEVEH SAVED, 

And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for 
the gourd ? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto 
death. 

Then said the Lord, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, 
for the which thou hast not labored, neither madest it grow; 
which came up in a night, and perished in a night : 

And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein 
are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern 
between their right hand and their left hand, and also much 
cattle ? Jonah 4 : 9, 10, 11. 

The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and 
abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thou- 
sands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. 

Exodus 34 : 6. 

Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, 
and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his 
heritage ? he retaineth not his anger forever, because he 
delighteth in mercy. Micah 7 : 18. 

A WIDE ocean rolls between the Nine- 
-*- -**- veh of yesterday and the Nineveh of 
to-day. Yesterday, Nineveh was the doomed 
city; to-day, she is the spared. Yesterday, 



NINEVEH SAVED. 1 73 

she was dead in law ; to-day, she is alive in 
gospel. Yesterday, she was spoken to from 
Mount Ebal ; to-day, from Mount Gerizim. 
Yesterday, she was under a mighty shadow ; 
to-day, the clouds are swept and gone, and 
the sun. is up and shining. Yesterday, she 
was touched with the rod of parental author- 
ity ; to-day, she is kissed with the kisses 
of parental affection. Yesterday, she was a 
blot on the fair face of creation ; to-day, the 
iniquity is taken away, and the sin is purged. 
Yesterday, she was scarlet ; to-day, she is 
white as snow. "There is, therefore, no 
condemnation to them which are in Christ 
Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after 
the spirit." A wide ocean, indeed, rolls 
between the Nineveh of yesterday, and the 
Nineveh of to-day. 

Now, what has made the difference ? What 
has made the Nineveh of to-day the mighty 
opposite of the Nineveh of yesterday? Has 
God changed ? Not a particle. There is 
absolutely no change with God, for " he is of 
one mind, and who can turn him ? " God is 



174 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

the immutable. Not only is he "the Father 
of lights, from whom cometh down every good 
and perfect gift," but he is "without varia- 
bleness, or the shadow of turning." No, the 
change is not there. It is Nineveh that has 
changed, not God ; and anything that appears 
here to the contrary, is only a condescension 
of the Divine Being to the ordinary modes 
of thought and expression common among 
men. 

As I view the matter, it stands briefly 
thus : Forty days were fixed as the bound- 
ary-line, beyond which, if Nineveh passed 
without repentance, she would go down to 
come up no more. If, at the end of forty 
days, the tree bears fruit, well ; but " if not, 
then after that thou shalt cut it down." 
These were the best terms that could be 
made for this fruitless fig tree in the great 
vineyard of the nations, and these terms were 
openly proclaimed and published throughout 
Nineveh. If not expressed, they were cer- 
tainly implied; and whether Jonah under- 
stood them or not, Nineveh certainly did. 



NINEVEH SAVED. 1 75 

But for the querulous complaint of the 
prophet, which appears in a later chapter, 
it would really seem that in the quick dis- 
cernment of the quality of mercy in God, 
the people of Nineveh shot far beyond the 
preacher of Nineveh. And here is the evi- 
dence that this hitherto reprobate and aban- 
doned population immediately fastened upon 
this conviction of the placability of the 
Divine nature, and hastened to bring forth 
fruit meet for repentance. "And God saw 
their works, that they turned from their evil 
way ; and God repented of the evil that he 
had said that he would do unto them, and he 
did it not." 

Nothing could be clearer than this Scrip- 
ture statement of the whole matter; and it 
would seem impossible for any man either to 
misstate it or misunderstand it. First the 
glittering sword is held up by the prophet 
Jonah, and then the way of escape is not 
less clearly pointed out by the king and his 
nobles. And so the issue is fairly joined, 
Nineveh deciding to flee, in the manner indi- 



I76 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

cated, from the coming storm ; and God 
saying to the repenting people, " Go in 
peace, but sin no more." 

But while all this is understood in Nine- 
veh, outside the walls of the great city there 
sits a man who does not comprehend that 
the showing of mercy is the greatest glory of 
the Divine nature. To this brooding, but 
short-sighted man, there is more glory in 
severity than in goodness ; and so the extra- 
ordinary grace shown to Nineveh gives rise 
to most bitter complaint and invective. 
Indeed, I doubt if Jonah sees any glory in 
mercy at all. I think there is evidence 
here that the prophet looks upon this sud- 
den return of the sword to its scabbard as 
a palpable weakness on the part of God, and 
furnishing a just ground of reproach to the 
Divine administration. At all events, for 
himself, the wilful and presuming man will 
have none of it. He washes his hands clear 
of the whole matter. As long as the sword 
is in his grasp, and he is valiantly waving it 
to and fro, gleaming and flashing before the 



NINEVEH SAVED. 1 77 

eyes of these wicked Ninevites, it is all 
right and proper. Very probably the sen 
of Amittai sees in that a wholesome asser- 
tion of the Divine honor and majesty ; and 
very probably, too, that is a view of the High 
and Lofty One who inhabiteth eternity, with 
which his bodily and mental state best pre- 
pares him to understand and sympathize. 

But when, upon the reformation of Nine- 
veh, the sharp weapon of God's justice is 
suddenly sheathed in another attribute, and 
for the quality of Divine justice we have the 
quality of the Divine forbearance and long- 
suffering, then all is changed with our prophet. 
Then he loses his way utterly and hope- 
lessly among the marvels of the God-head, 
and he no more understands the mechanism 
of the proceeding, the sublime and far-reach- 
ing significance of this masterpiece of the 
Divine clemency, than a child, turned loose 
among the stars, comprehends the amazing 
order, and beauty, and harmony of the heav- 
enly worlds. Alas, that I should say so ! 
Alas, for the frailties of the man ! Alas, for 



178 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

the infirmities of the prophet ! Gladly would 
I draw a veil over all this. Gladly would I 
speak of other things, and things which do 
him honor. But fidelity to the truth compels 
me to say that this man, just emancipated 
himself from "the belly of hell," has clean 
forgot all the dread lessons of the past, and 
looks upon the thunderbolt of heaven, halting 
in mid volley, very much as you would look 
upon a case of arrested development. 

And it is to him that God speaks in the 
parable of the gourd ; and here I know not 
which most to admire, the depth of God's 
mercy to Nineveh, or the depth of his conde- 
scension to his prophet. Observe, then, the 
nature of this controversy, between a mer- 
ciful God and an unmerciful servant. 

An awful judgment has been remitted in 
the case of Nineveh, which Jonah thinks 
should have been executed. This is the 
issue in the passage before us. So far as the 
prophet is concerned, it is a case of zeal 
without love. Jonah sees his way clear to 
the doctrine that sin must be punished; but 



NINEVEH SAVED. 1 79 

he does not see his way clear to the doctrine 
that sin may be pardoned. The quick-witted 
man understands in a moment how God can 
give up Nineveh, turn his back on the 
devoted city, command the earth to open and 
swallow her up ; but he does not understand 
how, even upon her reform, God should take 
Nineveh under his wings, as a hen gathereth 
her brood together, until the storm and the 
fury of his indignation be overpast. 

That God should have the minutest 
knowledge of Nineveh, and not be driven to 
despair as well as disgust by that knowledge, 
was past his comprehension. That God 
should be feeling an infinite abhorrence for 
her multiplied abominations, and yet be 
clinging to her with a fervor which the 
waters of a flood could not quench, was a 
problem in government which he had no 
means of solving. Sitting there in his booth 
outside the walls of Nineveh, waiting for 
prophecy to strike the hour for the execu- 
tion of the dread sentence that had gone out 
against her, it would have been a relief to 



l80 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

him to see the fiery tempest bursting on the 
devoted city, without the loss of a day after 
the prescribed forty. For would not truth 
and righteousness then be vindicated ? and 
what does Jonah see in God, beyond truth 
and righteousness ? 

Now it is very certain that God is just, 
and God is holy, and true and righteous 
altogether, for there is no iniquity with him, 
and assuredly there is no fellowship with sin, 
and no connivance with transgression. And 
yet, by one of those grand processes of 
thought known only to One who is wonder- 
ful in counsel and mighty in working, we 
actually behold on the cross of Christ this 
very fact of mercy and truth meeting 
together, righteousness and peace kissing 
each other. " God is just," says the apostle, 
"and yet the justifier of him that believeth 
in Jesus." 

But of all this, in its application, at least 
to the Gentile world, Jonah just then knew 
very little. He, himself, on a late occasion, 
when the sea-weeds were about his head, had 



NINEVEH SAVED. l8l 

been made a monument of God's sparing and 
forgiving mercy ; but, like the unforgiving 
servant in the parable of the two debtors, it 
seems to have quite passed from his memory. 
Willing, most willing, that mercy should be 
shown him in the awful hour of his extrem- 
ity, but displeased beyond endurance if a 
single drop of that mercy should fall upon 
the soul of another. " Let us fall now into 
the hand of the Lord ; for his mercies are 
great ; and let me not fall into the hand of 
man." 

Evidently, most evidently, Jonah does not 
know how to bridge the chasm of a creature's 
apostasy from God. He does not know how 
to save the sinner, and yet, by one and the 
same sublime expedient, to magnify the law 
and make it honorable. He does not know 
this ; and so, ignorant of all the divine 
methods of a redemptive process, he calls 
up to God to save his law and let the sinner 
go. But such is not the manner of the Lord 
God. He will do both the one and the 
other. He will protect law and law-giver, 



1 82 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

and yet Nineveh shall not go down. And it 
is just here that Jonah's schooling as an 
evangelical prophet begins, for this is the 
problem upon which he is now set at work ; 
and with what success we shall presently 
seek to show. 

It is observable here, however, that God's 
method of lodging a great truth in the heart 
of his prophet, is not by carrying him up to 
the great, but by bringing him down to the 
small. And in this, as in everything else, 
God's ways are not as our ways, nor his 
thoughts as our thoughts. He does not 
flood him with demonstrations. He does 
not weary him with abstractions. He does 
not turn him loose upon the infinite spaces 
of matter. He does not open his ear to the 
music of the spheres. He does not waft 
him over fields of light, or take him from 
star to star, or compel him to watch the 
movements and perturbations of all the 
heavenly host. Nothing of the kind. Jonah 
shall not stir from his booth, but God shall 
teach him a lesson this day that he will never 



NINEVEH SAVED. 1 83 

forget. God will make that booth the place 
of saving and divine manifestations. God 
will preach him a sermon upon a thing just 
now very much in his thoughts, and about 
which he is sorely exercised ; but which will 
presently take all the rock out of Jonah, will 
cause the hardness to depart, and, as in the 
case of Naaman, who went down and dipped 
himself seven times in Jordan, the flesh that 
will come upon him will be new and tender, 
like the flesh of a little child. 

But the parable that will do this, the para- 
ble that is destined to let in a world of light 
upon his disordered mind and fancy, will not 
be taken from the higher kingdom, but the 
lower ; not from the animal, but the vege- 
table ; not from the whole kingdom, but a 
single plant, which just now is all in all with 
the prophet. God's sermon to Jonah opens, 
indeed, upon an area of the narrowest kind, 
then widens into circles beyond ; and when 
finished, we are left standing on the shores 
of a great ocean of truth, where all our 
thoughts are fixed in rapt and adoring con- 



184 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

templation of a Being whose providence 
is over all his works, the minute and the 
vast, whether in heaven above or on earth 
below. 

The sermon is on this wise : First, " God 
prepared a gourd," a tall, umbrageous plant, 
which, in a single night, came springing up 
in all the tropical luxuriance of that Eastern 
clime, to the height of many feet ; and then, 
using the prophet's booth as a foundation or 
trellis-work, ran, like a spider-plant, quickly 
and skilfully over every part of the rude and 
fantastic hut of the yet sleeping man, so that 
when its toils are at last ended, Jonah has a 
defence from both heat and wind, those two 
great adversaries of his present Ninevite life 
and condition. Little, indeed, does the dis- 
mayed prophet imagine, when he lays him- 
self down that night in his booth, what exqui- 
site embellishments are about being added 
to his dwelling. But when day dawns and 
he awakes, it is there ; and now he finds 
himself the happy and delighted owner of 
a most original and picturesque dwelling. 



NINEVEH SAVED. 1 85 

The power that encompassed him in the 
whale's belly, encompasses him still, and the 
Divine munificence that shielded him when 
the weeds were about his head, shields him 
now, when his enemies are of the land, and 
not of the sea. 

It would not be easy to describe the effect 
of this new gift upon Jonah. But for once 
he is happy. Perhaps I might say, in 
ecstasy. All his springs are in motion. He 
looks with surprise and wonder upon all 
about him. He has never seen a thing so 
beautiful. He admires it. He triumphs in 
it. He dotes on it, as the moon-struck 
lover of celestial scenery dotes on the 
star-woven canopy of heaven ; and Jonah's 
canopy, like the heavenly, is one for which 
he too-ean say, that he has toiled not, neither 
has he spun. " So Jonah was exceeding 
glad of the gourd." 

Alas ! for our prophet, for " sorrow treads 
quick upon the heels of joy." The cup 
that is suddenly raised, is as suddenly 
dashed. For God who " prepared " the 



1 86 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

gourd, " prepared a worm also, when the 
morning rose, and it smote the gourd that 
it withered." And thus two mornings are 
in sad and bitter contrast ; for now to the 
summer of his blossoming comes the winter 
of his discontent. He has no longer a cover 
for his head, or a shadow for his grief. Of 
course he is inconsolable. He is in despair. 
His trials abound. One mountain wave 
succeeds another; and in the midst of vio- 
lent and ungovernable emotions, the depths 
open and swallow him up. 

Alas ! alas for Jonah ! The sun does not 
spare him, nor the vehement east wind either, 
which God had likewise "prepared ; " and on 
this day they were both let loose upon him, 
with more than wonted activity and force. 
Down came the fiery rays, piercing and dart- 
ing, scorching and burning. Then the 
" vehement east wind," blasting and con- 
suming every green thing, as with the breath 
of a furnace, and beating and howling around 
that now torn and dismantled hut, as if the 
miserable booth and its defenceless inhabi- 



NINEVEH SAVED. 1 87 

tant had become the targets of all the arrows 
that were lying in ambush for Nineveh. 
Alas for Jonah ! All the humanities are 
now out of him, and he is seized with dis- 
tractions. He bewails his gourd unceas- 
ingly. The most beautiful thing he had 
ever seen has perished ; and what has he 
left ? Life with his gourd, or death without 
it, is his cry ; and it is just here, in the grief 
and desolation caused by the withering of 
his new-found joy, that the parable opens 
that is to bring Jonah out of the prison- 
house. 

" And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well 
to be angry for the gourd ? " Nor was this 
the first time that Jonah had been addressed 
on this wise. Once, already, "Doest thou 
well to be angry ? " had sounded down to 
the erring prophet. And to this he had 
made no answer. He was doggedly silent 
when arraigned at the bar of the All-Merci- 
ful. But upon a second appeal, the long 
pent-up volcano burst forth in the most sur- 
prising manner. "I do well to be angry," 



1 88 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

said the roused and petulant man, "even 
unto death." And now that the tempest of 
his fury has discharged itself in the very- 
face of heaven, unawed, unabashed, unterri- 
ned in the very presence of the Almighty 
himself, God took his sinful servant in 
hand for correction. " Then said the Lord, 
Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the 
which thou hast not labored, neither madest 
it grow ; which came up in a night, and per- 
ished in a night ; and should not I spare 
Nineveh, . that great city, wherein are more 
than six-score thousand persons that cannot 
discern between their right hand and their 
left hand, and also much cattle ? " 

Now, in condescending to enter the lists 
with a worm of the dust, God begins by 
reminding him that he was a tenant at will, 
and in no sense a proprietor. He was not 
supreme in the case at all. He had compas- 
sion upon the gourd, but whose gourd, 
Jonah ? Who labored on the plant and 
made it grow ? Who brought to it the dews 
of heaven ? Who fed it with the fine moist- 



NINEVEH SAVED. 1 89 

ure of the earth ? Who enriched it with the 
chemistry of the elements ? Who watched 
over that first solitary cell that held in cus- 
tody the vital principle of the plant, and then 
waited for the growth of a neighbor cell, and 
then another, and yet another, till the whole 
reticulated work was framed and finished, 
according to the plan of the great Designer ? 
Whose gourd, Jonah ? Who was the skilful 
contriver ? Surely not Jonah ; and yet does 
the prophet pine and wilt under its loss, as 
if he were its maker and preserver. 

Now all this is but an entering wedge for 
the mighty doctrine that is to make such a 
grand upheavel with the prophet. God is 
here telling his minister that his own relation 
to that gourd is, after all, a much nearer 
one than any of which Jonah can boast. He 
is here reminding him of his own absolute 
right of ownership in the earth, and in all 
that grows out of it. He is here asserting 
the doctrine of his own sensitive and emo- 
tional nature, and bringing home the truth, 
that, as Lord of all, he is not only loving to 



190 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

every man, but that his tender mercies are 
over all his works. 

But from Jonah's monopoly of the gourd, 
it might seem that this was a department 
into which God never obtruded. It might 
seem that Jonah really thought that he had 
this kingdom to himself; that he was sole 
monarch of the leafy realm, and certainly of 
the gourd. But not so. Never was a man 
more mistaken. It neither came at his bid- 
ding, nor stayed for his pleasure. The 
helpless prophet had no more agency in pro- 
viding himself with the comfort of that shel- 
tering gourd, than he had in defending the 
beautiful plant from the ravages of the worm 
that was soon to lay it low ; or of resisting 
the yet more terrible battery of the vehe- 
ment east wind, that was already hastening 
up its forces from the burning sands of the 
desert. Gourd, and worm, and east wind, 
and fiery sunshine, were all beyond him ; 
and whether as friends or enemies, he was 
as impotent in dealing with them as a bound 
Samson. 



NINEVEH SAVED. 191 

" Over all his works." Not some, but all. 
Air, earth, and water, tree and leaf, shrub 
and flower, stars and star-depths, all beau- 
tiful things, all grand things, all sublime 
things, all lofty things, all lowly things, look 
up to him as their Maker, and Giver, and 
God. From floor to ceiling, from wall to 
dome, from corner-stone to cap-stone, this 
world is God's ; and when he made and sur- 
veyed it, in the light of his perfections, he 
pronounced over it the highest eulogy the 
Creator could bestow upon his works, for 
" God saw everything that he had made, and 
behold, it was very good." The Almighty 
builder of this universal frame regarded with 
infinite satisfaction the perfected work of his 
hands. 

And not only so, but in this wide universe 
there is no waste ; none whatever. No 
waste of light, or sweetness, or beauty. 
Man wastes ; God never. The meanest 
floweret of the vale has a mission, and fills 
it. God, who wraps the flower in the bud, 
and the bud in the seedling, and then sends 



192 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

it forth to rock, or dell, or desert, goes with 
it in the sovereign ubiquity of his presence, 
and is there to note its progress, and watch 
its developments. One eye sees it, if no 
more. 

Yea, verily, God has a care for all. He 
has a care for the flower of the field, and 
still says of it, as when bodily present with 
us, that " Solomon in all his glory was not 
arrayed like one of these." He has a care 
for this carpet of green, and year by year 
renews it. He has a care for this canopy of 
blue, and every night he folds it up, and 
stretches it out every morning. He has a 
care for the high hills and the deep valleys, 
for Alpine ranges and for mossy dells, for 
cloud - piercing summits where the eagle 
builds his eyrie, and for the little hills which 
pasture the poor man's flocks. And no 
eye looks forth on all this goodly garniture 
of earth and its myriad productions with 
the satisfaction of him whose hands have 
"labored" upon the rich inheritance, and 
whose power has made it "grow." God's 



NINEVEH SAVED. 1 93 

tender mercies, we repeat, are over all his 
works. 

Now it may seem a small thing to speak 
of the Infinite Creator in this way, but I do 
not so regard it. I think it a sad thing to 
divorce even this gourd from its Creator ; nor 
will God suffer it. I think it a sad thing when 
we forget that he overlooks nothing that he 
has made, not even bruised reeds, or smok- 
ing flax ; but everywhere seeks, with the 
ceaseless assiduity of Infinite gentleness and 
love, to bind up and sustain, until he bring 
forth judgment unto victory. 

But the showing of the Divine mercy for 
Nineveh rests upon a broader and a higher 
basis than Jonah's pity for a gourd. There 
are interests here in Nineveh of more value 
than many gourds. With Jonah there is 
pity, but the pity is not in the right place. 
He had pity upon the gourd, because it had a 
certain personal relation to himself ; but 
what is a gourd to a man ? Can a gourd 
think ? Can a gourd feel ? Can a gourd 
love ? Can a gourd pray ? Can a gourd 



194 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

commune with God ? " Thou hast had pity 
upon a gourd, for the which thou hast not 
labored, neither madest it grow ; which 
came up in a night, and perished in a 
night." 

But what is a whole race of such ephemera 
to one immortal ? Here is a man stamped 
with God's image; a nature to which God 
has made a revelation of himself ; a nature 
which, in the eternal counsels of heaven, 
has been taken into connection with the 
Divine; a nature for which the Lamb was 
slain from the foundation of the world ; a 
nature that God has set himself, in all the 
power of the sacred Three in One, to redeem, 
and renew, and exalt to an immortal fellow- 
ship in the kingdom of heaven. But for this 
nature, this nature of unspeakable and eter- 
nal value, this deeply diseased and suffering, 
yet greatly honored and exalted nature, this 
erring prophet is utterly without pity and 
without concern. Pity for a gourd which 
came in a night, and perished in a night, but 
not a thought, nor a sigh, nor a tear, nor a 



NINEVEH SAVED. I95 

prayer, nor a wish for a whole kingdom of 
blood-bought immortals ! Pity for a gourd, 
but fretting himself to death because Nine- 
veh was not already stranded in some vale 
of Siddim ! But God's thoughts are not as 
his thoughts, nor are God's ways as his ways. 
" Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the 
which thou hast not labored, neither madest 
it grow ; and should not / spare Nineveh, 
that great city, wherein are more than six- 
score thousand persons that cannot discern 
between their right hand and their left 
hand, and also much cattle ? " 

Persons, not things. Persons, I say; but 
persons have hearts : and as the Scriptures 
declare, "your hearts shall live forever." 
Persons. But persons have minds ; and 
mind is the highest thing in the universe. 
Persons. But persons have souls ; and one 
soul is of more account than the whole 
world beside. Pity for a gourd ; but none 
for the most glorious mechanism, the most 
finished contrivance on which the sun ever 
shone. Pity for a gourd, whose entire period 



I96 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

of growth and decline, of life and death, of 
coming and going, is as a watch in the 
night ; but indifferent to beings who will 
live, and suffer or enjoy, when yonder sun 
shall be blown out, and every lamp of heaven 
shall go down, to come up no more. Pity 
for matter, a dust-atom, a thing of yesterday, 
and which has no to-morrow ; but none for 
living, rational, immortal souls, though they 
be as the stars of heaven, or as the sand 
upon the seashore, for multitude. 

But if such is the pity of man, such is not 
the pity of the Lord God. "Thou, Lord," 
says David, " art good, and ready to forgive, 
and plenteous in mercy unto all them that 
call upon thee." And as Nineveh has called 
upon God, so Nineveh shall this day wit- 
ness for God. As Nineveh has turned 
from the evil of her way, so God will now 
rejoice to hold back his thunders. As 
Nineveh has fled to the horns of the altar, 
God will cast upon her the mantle of his 
forgiveness, and bid her go in peace and 
sin no more. 



NINEVEH SAVED. I97 

But to such a picture of the divine compas- 
sions was there ever such a foil ; a picture so 
full of the light and the glow of heaven, set 
in such deep and awful shadows ? As I look 
at Jonah I exclaim, What ! Is there nothing 
that the prophet can do for Nineveh ? Will 
he propose nothing ? Attempt nothing ? 
Will he stand by and see this exceeding 
great city of three days' journey go down, 
without the movement of a muscle ? Now 
that he is done with prophesying, will he 
not take up with intercession ? Where is 
the prophet's burden ? Where is the proph- 
et's fire ? Will he not do for Nineveh what 
Abraham did for Sodom, if by any means he 
may turn aside the wrath, and draw down 
the blessing ? 

Nay, verily. What then ? Hath he shut 
up the bowels of his compassion ? Are 
such things dead within him ? Has he 
parted with the sweet humanities forever ? 
Is there no possible point of contact between 
his soul and this yet living, breathing, palpi- 
tating Nineveh ? Has he become a very 



ICjg NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

rock in hardness and impenetrability ? Is 
his ground all hard and frozen, impervious 
alike to seed, and rain, and sunshine ? Has 
he no vision of the innocent suffering with 
the guilty ? Is he deaf to the lowing of the 
herds, and the bleating of the flocks ? Or 
are mighty cares upon him; so mighty that 
they engross him, absorb him, engulf him ? 
And what are they ? A hut. A gourd. A 
scorching sunbeam. A vehement east wind. 
Alas, our strong man has fainted ! And in 
the presence of such personal grievances, 
such indescribable hardships, such tremen- 
dous inflictions, Nineveh may sink, if she will, 
into a fiery lake, and go down to come up no 
more forever ! 

Ah, it is well for Nineveh that she has 
fallen into the hands of God, and not into 
the hands of man. Jonah, indeed, has 
strangely forgotten ; but God has not. Jo- 
nah is insensible to everything but what has 
a certain fixed relation to himself ; but God 
is already opening his arms, and providing a 
refuge into which both broken hearts and 



NINEVEH SAVED. 1 99 

contrite ones may turn. Jonah is for cutting 
down the barren fig tree on the very day 
and hour ; but a merciful God is for sparing. 
And never did a royal proclamation breathe 
more of gentleness and good-will than the 
one that now sounded down to this hard 
and obdurate man : " And should not I spare 
Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more 
than sixscore thousand persons that cannot 
discern between their right hand and their 
left hand, and also much cattle ? " 

A hundred and twenty thousand little 
children shut up in Nineveh, who cannot 
discern their right hand from their left ! 
And, if possible, God will not suffer a hair 
of their heads to perish. Not a word now of 
the worth and the sweetness of the human 
affections, which go along with this little 
army of The Innocents. But God, the 
mighty Father of us all, knows it well, and 
has implanted it within us ; and well he 
knows also that the blow which would bring 
down the tree and its branches, would not 
leave a sprig or a bud standing. And that 



200 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

is enough to secure for Nineveh a reprieve 
for a good century to come. 

Nor, still speaking of the largeness of 
God's compassions, was this all. For besides 
all this, in Nineveh, and possibly far out 
upon its plains, are scattered the "much 
cattle " whose lowings and bleatings have 
already entered the ear of the Lord of 
Sabaoth. And little does Nineveh know 
the power of these dumb animals in pleading 
their cause in the chancery of Heaven. 
Little does Nineveh know who are bringing 
her out from under the paw of the lion. 
Indeed, if we did not know that Nineveh 
herself had called on God, we should be 
ready to say, that the babes of Nineveh on 
the one hand, and the beasts of Nineveh on 
the other, had more power with God than 
her men. " And should not I spare Nineveh, 
that great city, wherein are more than six- 
score thousand persons that cannot discern 
between their right hand and their left hand, 
and also much cattle ? " 

Oh, the infinite amiableness of God ! " Oh, 



NINEVEH SAVED. 201 

that men would praise the Lord for his good- 
ness, and for his wonderful works to the 
children of men." Sing praises to the Lord : 
sing praises : sing praises with understand- 
ing : sing praises. Sing* unto God : sing 
praises to his name : extol him that rideth 
upon the heavens by his name Jah, and 
rejoice before him. "Give unto the Lord, 
O ye kindreds of the people, give unto the 
Lord the glory due unto his name. Bring 
an offering, and come into his courts." 

And, undoubtedly, the loftiest exercise of 
created beings is this fixed and adoring con- 
templation of God. Nor is there a grander 
theme in heaven than that which engages 
the heavenly host, when they sing the song 
of Moses and the Lamb, saying, " Great 
and marvellous are thy works, Lord Gcd 
Almighty, just and true are thy ways, thou 
King of saints." Yea, all that is blessed on 
earth and blessed in heaven is summed up 
in that saying of Christ, " This is life eternal, 
that they might know thee, the only true God, 
and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." 



202 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

But alas for the deceits of sin ! " The ox 
knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's 
crib : but Israel doth not know, my people 
do not consider." "O righteous Father," 
said Christ, "the world hath not known 
thee." "Show us the Father," said Philip, 
"and it sufficeth us." "Have I been so 
long time with you, and yet hast thou not 
known me, Philip ? He that hath seen me 
hath seen the Father ; and how sayest thou 
then, Show us the Father ? " And yet it is 
a fact which nothing but a world-wide apos- 
tasy can explain, that with all that God has 
revealed of himself, with the full-orbed rays 
of the Sun of righteousness shining down 
into our very midst, yet multitudes, multi- 
tudes are still not only grossly ignorant of 
God, but are even saying, " Depart from us, 
for we desire not the knowledge of thy 
ways." 

But if ignorant of God, then is that ignor- 
ance a sin and a shame. It need not, ought 
not, must not be. With this open Bible, 
men are without excuse if they do not know 



NINEVEH SAVED. 203 

God; and know God to admire him, adore 
him, and serve him. 

As I turn to survey the past, the rich, 
the teeming past, crowded with witnesses 
for God, as God crowds the skies of the 
Southern hemisphere with his stars ; as I 
sweep over the field of his Providence, 
waving with a thousand harvests ; as I 
watch the movements of a wheel, that, 
according to Ezekiel, is high and dreadful ; 
I see nothing, read nothing, hear nothing 
to contradict the great revelation made to 
Moses, when He passed by and proclaimed 
himself to be "The Lord, The Lord God, 
merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and 
abundant in goodness and truth, keeping 
mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, 
trangression, and sin, and that will by no 
means clear the guilty ; visiting the iniquity 
of the fathers upon the children, and upon 
the children's children unto the third and 
to the fourth generation." " Behold the 
goodness and the severity of God." " I will 
sing of mercy and of judgment : unto thee, 



204 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

Lord, will I sing." I certainly get no 
other impression of God than this. I see 
nothing, from first to last, at variance with 
the worthy song that is sung before the 
throne of God and the Lamb. I see that 
the government of God is strictly paternal. 

1 see also that it is strictly, invariably, and 
eternally just. I believe it to be equally 
removed from weakness and from hardness, 
and one that should unite every being 
in the whole vast universe in singing, 
"Alleluiah, for the Lord God Omnipotent 
reigneth." 

But if I speak of the Divine compassions, 
as indeed the subject requires me to do, 
then I am out on a sea where all my 
thoughts are drowned. Twenty-six times 
in a single Psalm we are told that " the 
mercy of the Lord endureth forever ; " and 
if the Psalmist had gone on from that time 
till now in repeating his noble and beautiful 
refrain, he would still be as far as ever from 
touching the bottom of the ocean whose 
depths he was sounding. Jonah had pity 



NINEVEH SAVED. 205 

upon a gourd ; but God has pity for a man. 
And then it must be added that God's pity 
was the pity of the Most Holy for the 
unholy ; the pity of the Supreme Law-giver 
for the law-breaker ; the pity of the Judge of 
all the earth, for a convicted transgressor ; 
the pity of the Father of the spirits of all 
flesh, for a race of prodigals ; for God com- 
mendeth his love toward us, in that while 
we were yet sinners, Christ died for the 
ungodly. 

But who may speak of such pity as this ? 
Of God's pity for lost men ? Of God's pity 
for universal defilement ? Of God's pity for 
shipwrecked humanity ? Of God's pity for 
a leprous world ? " Oh, the depth of the 
riches both of the knowledge and the wisdom 
of God ! How unsearchable are his judg- 
ments, and his ways past finding out!" 
" God so loved the world that he gave his 
only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth 
on him should not perish, but have everlast- 
ing life." And this is the great central fact 
of revelation, to which we are brought again 



206 NINEVEH AND ITS REPENTANCE. 

and again, as the one truth of universal and 
overwhelming concern to us all. It is the 
one truth which demands our instant and 
hearty acceptance. It is the foundation 
stone on which we are called to build ; and 
on which rests the grand hope of eternal life ! 
Without this, we are lost and undone men ! 
Without this, we are sinners before the 
Lord exceedingly. Without this, we shall at 
last lie down in sorrow and despair, saying, 
" How have I hated instruction, and despised 
reproof, and would not obey the voice of my 
teachers ! " 

But to-day the royal proclamation that is 
sounding down from heaven, is one of free, 
sovereign, unbounded mercy to every dweller 
upon the habitable earth. The trumpet is 
golden, and the message is, Mercy for the 
guilty ! Mercy for the unclean ! Mercy for 
the broken-hearted ! Mercy for all ! " Ho, 
every one that thirsteth, come ye to the 
waters ; and he that hath no money, come 
ye, buy, and eat ; yea, come, buy wine and 
milk without money and without price." 



NINEVEH SAVED. 207 

" Let the wicked forsake his way, and the 
unrighteous man his thoughts : and let him 
return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy 
upon him ; and to our God, for he will 
abundantly pardon." "Come unto me, all 
ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will 
give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and 
learn of me : for I am meek and lowly in 
heart : and ye shall find rest unto your souls. 
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is 
light." " Let us therefore come boldly unto 
the throne of grace, that we may obtain 
mercy, and find grace to help in time of 
need." 

And this is the sum of God's teaching to 
Jonah, and to Nineveh, and to us all ! 



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